/A 


By  F.  B.  Jevons,  Lift.  D. 

Professor  of  Philosophy  in  the  University  of  Durham 


Personality. 

The  Idea  of  God  in  Early  Religions. 
Comparative  Religion. 
Philosophy :  What  is  it  ? 


(PHILOSOPHY 

WHAT  IS  IT  ? 


BY 

F.  B.  JEVONS,  LITT.D. 

PROFESSOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY  IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  DURHAM 

AUTHOR  OF  "PERSONALITY,"    "THE  IDEA  OF  GOD  IN  EARLY 
RELIGIONS,"  "COMPARATIVE  RELIGION,"  ETC. 


Cambridge : 
at  the  University  Press 

New    York : 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

1914 


COPYRIGHT,  1914 

BY 

F.    B.   JEVONS 


"Cbc  "fcnfcfccrbocfccr  press,  Hew  SJorfc 


PREFACE 

ONE  of  the  branches  of  the  Workers' 
Educational  Association  expressed  a  de- 
sire to  know  what  Philosophy  is ;  thereby 
assuming  that  Philosophy  is  a  concern  of 
the  average  man  and  of  practical  life, 
and  should  not  be  the  monopoly  of  the 
professed  student.  Of  the  truth  of  this 
view  there  can  be  no  doubt,  and  this 
book  consists  of  the  five  lectures  which 
were  given  by  way  of  an  attempt,  not  so 
much  to  answer  their  question  as  to  bring 
out  the  meaning  of  the  question.  Hence 
the  interrogative  form  of  the  title — Philo- 
sophy: what  is  it  ? 

The  attempt  was  necessarily  made,  in 
the  discussion  of  the  question,  to  avoid 
technical  terms  as  far  as  possible.  With- 
out technical  terms  it  is  impossible,  it  may 
be  said,  to  go  very  far  in  the  discussion. 
But  it  should  be  possible,  without  them, 


iv  Preface 

to  go  far  enough  to  open  the  discussion, 
and  to  indicate  both  the  nature  of  an- 
swers which  have  been  given  to  the  ques- 
tion, and  the  reasons  why  some  of  the 
answers  are  less  satisfactory  than  others. 
Indeed,  each  of  the  lectures  was  followed 
by  an  hour's  discussion  in  class,  which 
served  to  show  that  working  men  and 
women  found  the  question  to  be  interest- 
ing and  the  answers  to  admit  of  debate. 
The  lectures  are,  therefore,  now  printed, 
on  the  chance  that  others  also,  as  well  as 
those  who  heard  them,  may  find  the 
question  attractive  and  the  answer  worth 
discussing. 

F.  B.  JEVONS. 

HATFIELD  HALL 

DURHAM 
5th  March,  1914 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER  I 
PHILOSOPHY  AND  SCIENCE i 

CHAPTER  II 
MATERIALISM  AND  IDEALISM          ....      34 

CHAPTER  III 
SCEPTICISM  IN  PHILOSOPHY  .         .         .         .         .67 

CHAPTER  IV 
PHILOSOPHY  IN  PRACTICE 98 

CHAPTER  V 
PERSONALITY  AND  THE  WHOLE       .         .         .         .129 

INDEX 169 


PHILOSOPHY 

WHAT  IS  IT? 


Philosophy:  What  is  it? 


CHAPTER  I 

PHILOSOPHY  AND  SCIENCE 

IN  the  lives  of  most,  and  perhaps  of  all,  of 
us  there  come  moments  of  dejection,  or 
even  of  despair,  when  the  burden  and  the 
mystery  of  this  unintelligible  world  come 
with  such  crushing  weight  upon  us 
that,  in  spite  even  of  religion  itself,  we 
ask,  "What  does  it  all  mean?  What  is 
the  good  of  it  all?"  The  questions  are 
asked  in  a  despair  which  implies  that  there 
is  no  meaning  in  it  all,  and  no  good  in  lif e ; 
or  that,  if  there  is,  at  any  rate  we  cannot 
see  it. 

But  though  the  questions  may  be  asked, 
and  in  moments  of  personal  despair  are 


2  Philosophy 

asked,  in  a  tone  which  implies  that  no 
satisfactory  answer  is  or  can  be  forth- 
coming, they  may  also  be  considered,  in 
a  calmer  mood,  as  questions  which  call 
for  a  reasoned  answer,  and  with  regard 
to  which  we  must  ask,  as  a  matter 
of  deliberation  rather  than  of  despair, 
whether  an  answer  is  possible  at  all. 
Now,  it  is  the  calm  consideration  of 
these  questions  in  a  reflective  mood,  and 
of  the  answers  that  are  to  be  given  to 
them — if  any  answer  can  be  given — that 
constitutes  philosophy. 

Let  us  look,  therefore,  once  more  at  the 
questions,  "What  does  it  all  mean? 
What  is  the  good  of  it  all?"  and  let  us 
see  what  is  implied  by  the  questions. 
The  "it"  in  "What  does  it  all  mean? 
What  is  the  good  of  it  all?"  evidently 
refers  to  the  experience  we  have  of  the 
world  and  life.  Obviously,  therefore,  it 
is  with  experience  that  philosophy  has  to 
do — with  our  experience  in  life;  it  is 
from  experience,  therefore,  that  philo- 
sophy has  to  start,  and  it  is  on  experience, 


Philosophy  and  Science          3 

and  the  things  experienced,  that  philo- 
sophy has  to  reflect. 

Next,  the  questions  are  put  not  about 
this  or  that  particular  experience,  this  or 
that  particular  phase  of  experience,  this  or 
that  particular  department  of  knowledge, 
or  of  life,  or  of  experience,  but  about  it 
all — what  does  it  all  mean?  It  is,  there- 
fore, all  experience,  experience  as  a  whole, 
being  and  knowledge  as  a  whole,  that 
philosophy  has  to  contemplate. 

Further,  the  tone  in  which  the  ques- 
tions are  put,  "What  does  it  all  mean? 
What  is  the  good  of  it  all?"  implies  that 
the  person  who  puts  these  questions 
despairingly  to  the  universe,  took  it  for 
granted,  once  upon  a  time,  that  life  was 
worth  living,  that  there  was  some  good 
in  it  and  that  it  had  some  meaning;  but 
that  now  he  is  beginning  to  wonder 
whether  there  is  any  meaning  in  it  all, 
whether  the  universe  is  rational  and 
intelligible,  and  whether  there  is  any  good 
in  it.  He  is  beginning  to  be  sceptical  and 
doubtful  on  these  points. 


4  Philosophy 

Now,  you  and  I  may  be  convinced  in 
the  bottom  of  our  hearts  that  the  world 
is  run  on  rational  and  intelligible  princi- 
ples, and  that  there  is  some  good  in  life, 
and  might  be  more  if  only  men  would 
think  and  act  reasonably.  But,  if  we  are 
convinced  of  this,  we  ought  to  be  able 
to  give  some  answer  to  the  man  who 
is  doubtful  and  sceptical  about  it.  And 
if  you  are  to  understand  his  difficulties, 
you  must  put  yourself  in  his  position. 
You  must  put  yourself  in  his  place  so  far 
as  to  ask  whether  there  is  any  meaning  in 
life,  any  good  in  it  all.  And  you  must 
ask  the  question  fairly  and  squarely,  7s 
there  any  meaning  in  it  all?  And  to 
answer  the  question  you  must  turn  to 
experience,  his  experience,  your  experience, 
the  experience  of  all  of  us,  and  you  must 
reflect  upon  it  as  a  whole — that  is  to  say, 
you  must  become  a  philosopher.  Each 
science  tells  us  about  some  particular  set  of 
things;  but  when  every  science  has  done 
so,  the  question  still  remains,  "What 
does  it  all  mean?  What  does  it  all  come 


Philosophy  and  Science          5 

to?"  And  any  attempt  to  answer  these 
questions  is  a  philosophy.  It  is  with 
the  whole  of  experience  that  philosophy 
attempts  to  deal.  Philosophy  is  the 
attempt  to  deal  with  the  whole,  and  with 
our  experience  as  a  whole. 

It  is  from  experience  we  have  to  start, 
and  to  experience  that  we  have  to  return. 
We  start,  and  must  start,  from  it,  because 
we  have  nothing  else  we  can  start  from. 
We  reflect  upon  it — and  the  reflection 
upon  it  is  philosophy — in  the  hope  that 
having  done  so  we  may  understand  it 
rather  better  when  we  have  thought  it 
over.  If  that  should  be  the  fortunate 
result,  then  we  shall  find  that  we  under- 
stand our  experience  better  than  we  did, 
and  that  there  is  more  in  it  than  we 
thought  at  first,  and  even  that  it  is 
in  some  respects  really  different  from 
what  at  first  we  took  it  to  be. 

Of  course  there  is  also  the  possibility — 
even  if  it  be  but  a  bare  possibility — that 
the  more  we  reflect  upon  experience,  the 
more  difficult  it  will  be  to  discover  any 


6  Philosophy 

meaning  in  it,  or  to  make  any  sense  out 
of  it.  And  if  we  finally  come  to  the  con- 
clusion that  there  is  no  meaning  in  the 
world,  or  none  discoverable  by  us,  the 
conclusion  will  still  be  a  philosophical 
conclusion,  because  it  is  the  conclusion 
to  which  we  are  brought  by  reflection 
upon  experience,  but  it  will  be  a  sceptical 
philosophy. 

In  philosophy,  as  in  other  departments 
of  inquiry,  scepticism  is  the  revolt  against 
dogmatism;  that  is  to  say,  philosophical 
scepticism,  or  scepticism  in  philosophy, 
is  the  revolt  against  the  notion  that  there 
are  some  conclusions  which  we  may  not 
question,  but  must  accept  without  in- 
quiry or  reason.  But  it  is  the  very 
breath  and  being  of  philosophy  that 
it  should  at  all  times  be  ready  to  recon- 
sider its  conclusions  in  the  light  of  new 
evidence  and  fresh  facts.  Only  by  doing 
so  can  philosophy  either  grow  or  live  at 
all.  The  dogmatism  which  forbids  it  to 
readjust  itself  to  the  growth  of  know- 
ledge is  a  dead  hand  laid  upon  philosophy 


Philosophy  and  Science          7 

and  fatal  to  it.  So  far,  then,  as  sceptic- 
ism is  a  revolt  against  dogmatism  and 
destructive  of  it,  it  is  an  essential  con- 
dition of  the  growth  of  philosophy. 

But  (Jestru^ion,  necessary  though  it 
often  iSjJn  philosophy  as  elsewhere,  is  not 
constmction.  It  may  be  necessary  to 
pull  down  an  old  building  before  we  can 
build  a  new  one  on  the  site.  But  if  we 
destroy,  it  is  only  in  order  that  we  may 
reconstruct.  And  that  is  why  scepticism 
never  in  the  course  of  philosophy  has  been, 
and  never  in  the  course  of  things  can  be, 
final.  But  that  is  just  the  important 
fact  which  is  overlooked  by  those  who 
consider  that  scepticism  is  the  last  word 
in  philosophy.  The  truth  is  that  philo- 
sophy is  a  living,  growing  study;  and 
that,  so  long  as  it  lives  and  grows,  the  last 
word  has  not  yet  been  said. 

The  reason  why  philosophy  is  a 
living,  growing,  department  of  inquiry 
and  thought,  is,  as  has  already  been  said, 
that  it  is  with  experience  that  philosophy 
has  to  do:  it  is  from  experience  that 


8  Philosophy 

philosophy  has  to  start.  Philosophy  is 
reflection  upon  experience  and  the  things 
experienced;  and  it  is  on  the  whole  of 
experience  that  it  must  be  based,  if  it 
is  to  have  any  value.  But  experience 
is  continually  increasing;  the  world  is 
growing  older  and  riper  in  experience 
every  day.  That  is  to  say,  the  whole 
of  experience  never  is  or  can  be  before  us. 
Finality  in  philosophy,  therefore,  is  for 
ever  beyond  our  reach,  if  by  finality 
we  imagine,  with  the  dogmatist,  that  it 
is  possible  to  say  to  the  free  spirit  of 
philosophy,  "Thus  far  shalt  thou  go,  and 
no  further."  Philosophy,  therefore,  can 
never  recognise  finality  in  this  shape, 
but  must  ever  pass  forwards  and  on- 
wards. We  may  take  stock  of  our  experi- 
ence and  its  results  up  to  the  moment 
when  we  take  stock  of  it;  we  may  even 
form  some  notion  of  whether  the  business 
is  going  up  or  down.  But  the  business 
of  experience  is  a  going  concern;  we  are 
acquiring  experience  every  day,  and  we 
do  not  know  how  it  will  stand  a  year  or 


Philosophy  and  Science          9 

a  century  hence.  To  say  or  imagine 
that  we  do  know  is  simply  the  dogmatism 
which  is  fatal  to  the  development  of 
philosophy.  What  we  can  do  is  to  form 
some  notion  of  how  it  is  going.  We  can 
say  how  things  look  now.  To  say  how 
they  will  look  a  century  hence  is  simply 
dogmatism,  and  simple  folly.  The  philo- 
sophy of  a  century  hence  must  do  that. 
What  we  have  to  start  from  is  experience 
as  far  as  it  has  already  gone.  That  is 
the  experience  which  philosophy  has  to 
reflect  upon,  and  about  which  it  has  to 
inquire  whether  it  has  any  meaning, 
and  what  is  the  good  of  it  all. 

But  if  we  say  this,  perhaps  we  shall  be 
understood  to  mean  that  philosophy, 
being  concerned  with  experience,  is  con- 
cerned only  with  what  is  past.  That 
however  would  be  to  misunderstand  us. 
As  philosophers  we  are  not  concerned  with 
the  past,  or  rather  are  not  concerned  to 
write  a  history  of  the  things  that  are  past 
and  done  for.  With  the  past  we  are 
only  concerned  so  far  as  it  is  related  to  the 


io  Philosophy 

present  and  the  future.  If  experience 
has  any  meaning,  if  any  meaning  runs 
through  it,  then  that  meaning  has  run 
through  all  the  successive  moments  of  the 
past,  or  has  been  displayed  in  them,  and 
has  been  displayed  as  binding  them 
together  into  one  whole.  Those  suc- 
cessive moments  of  the  past  were  each  of 
them  at  one  time  future,  then  present, 
and  then  past.  Now,  we  look  back  upon 
them  and  see  them  forming  one  whole — a 
whole  of  which  we  have  had  and  still  have 
experience.  In  the  same  way,  the  suc- 
cessive moments,  which  are  not  yet  past, 
but  are  running  by  us  now,  are  each  of 
them  in  turn  first  future,  then  present, 
and  then  past.  And  if  we  look  upon 
them,  and  reflect,  we  shall  see  that  they, 
too,  are  forming  one  whole;  the  future 
moment,  ere  I  can  get  the  words  out  of 
my  mouth,  has  become  present  and  has 
fallen  back  into  the  past.  But  if  the  past 
and  future  moments  are  thus  related, 
if  they  are  thus  indeed  inseparable,  then 
they  form  one  whole.  We  may,  indeed, 


Philosophy  and  Science         n 

distinguish  one  moment  from  another,  but 
we  cannot  separate  them,  just  as  we  can 
distinguish  the  sides  of  a  straight  line, 
though  we  cannot  put  one  side  of  the  line 
here  and  the  other  somewhere  else.  The 
past  moment  and  the  future  are,  like  the 
sides  of  the  line,  related  and  inseparable: 
they  are  related  in  the  present,  when 
we  are  continually  passing  through  the 
one  into  the  other;  and  they  are,  though 
distinguishable,  inseparable,  because  they 
are  parts  of  one  whole.  That,  then,  is  the 
nature  of  our  experience  and  of  its  suc- 
cessive moments,  which  we  may  dis- 
tinguish, but  cannot  possibly  separate, 
from  one  another.  Experience  is  a  whole, 
and  it  is  that  whole  which  philosophy  has 
to  contemplate  and  -on  which  it  reflects. 
But  to  say  that  experience  is  a  whole 
is  to  make  a  statement  which  is  dogmatic ; 
and  which,  being  dogmatic,  necessarily 
provokes  scepticism — that  is  to  say, 
invites  inquiry  and  requires  explanation. 
To  say  that  experience  is  a  whole  is  to 
make  a  statement  which  especially  re- 


12  Philosophy 

quires  explanation,  because,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  philosophy — that  is  to  say, 
the  explanation  of  experience — never  can 
be  final,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
experience  itself  is  continually  increasing: 
it  never  is,  but  always  is  to  be,  completed. 
If,  then,  experience  never  is  complete,  if 
philosophy  accordingly  never  can  be 
final,  how,  the  sceptical  philosopher  may 
inquire,  how  can  experience  ever  be  a 
whole? 

The  difficulty  thus  raised  can  be  met  to 
some  extent  by  means  of  an  analogy. 
Thus,  a  circle,  for  instance,  is  a  whole. 
Yet  we  can  understand  what  is  meant 
if  any  one  speaks  of  an  expanding  circle. 
Experience,  on  this  analogy,  may  be 
spoken  of  as  a  circle  continually  ex- 
panding. The  analogy,  however,  is  ob- 
viously imperfect,  because  knowledge  not 
only  increases  in  extent  and  in  amount, 
but  grows  richer  and  more  diversified 
in  its  quality  and  content.  We  may  then, 
perhaps,  find  a  closer  analogy,  if  we  com- 
pare experience  to  an  organism.  A  living 


Philosophy  and  Science         13 

organism  is  a  whole,  having  its  parts, 
each  one  of  which  is  different  from  every 
other,  and  no  one  of  which  can  live  apart 
from  the  others.  And  yet  the  organism, 
though  it  is  a  whole,  and  because  it  is  a 
living  organism,  is  continually  growing. 
At  no  moment  in  the  process  of  its  growth 
has  the  organism  attained  its  final  shape. 
And  at  no  moment  in  its  growth  has 
experience,  either,  attained  finality;  yet 
at  every  moment  it  is  a  whole,  even 
though  it  has  the  capacity  always  of 
further  growth. 

We  may  then  fairly  say  there  is  nothing 
unreasonable  in  supposing  that  experi- 
ence may  be  a  whole  and  a  growing  whole ; 
and  that  though  it  grows,  or  rather 
because  it  grows,  it  has  not  attained 
finality.  But  though  there  seems  to  be 
nothing  unreasonable  in  supposing,  to 
start  with,  that  experience  may  form  a 
whole,  still  we  can  put  it  forward  only  as 
a  supposition  or  hypothesis.  To  put  it 
forward  as  a  fact  would  be  to  commit 
the  error  of  dogmatising.  We  should 


14  Philosophy 

be  forgetting  the  very  point  from  which 
we  started  in  this  lecture.  We  started 
with  the  question  which  some  men 
ask  about  life  and  experience,  "What 
does  it  all  mean?  What  is  the  good  of 
it  all?"  And  that  is  precisely  the  ques- 
tion which  philosophy  is  continually 
attempting  to  answer.  We  must  assume 
either  that  there  is  an  answer  to  it,  or 
that  there  is  not.  And  whether  we 
assume,  to  begin  with,  that  there  is  or  is 
not  an  answer,  we  have  in  the  end  to 
show  that  our  assumption  fits  in  with  the 
facts.  We  may,  indeed,  assume  that 
there  is  an  answer,  and  we  may  put 
forward  what  we  consider  to  be  the 
answer.  If  we  do,  then  it  is  the  business 
of  other  philosophers  to  show  how  far 
the  answer  we  give  fails  to  be  satisfactory; 
and  then  it  becomes  our  business  to  re- 
shape the  answer  so  that  it  will  fit  the 
facts.  And  this  process  goes  on  and 
will  go  on,  just  so  long  as  fresh  facts 
turn  up,  or  so  long  as  our  answers  fail 
to  account  for  all  the  old  facts. 


Philosophy  and  Science         15 

Now,  this,  which  is  the  process  of 
philosophy,  is,  of  course,  the  process  of 
science  also.  Science,  like  philosophy, 
has  continually  to  re-shape  itself  in  order 
to  find  place — and  to  find  the  proper 
place — for  all  the  facts.  That  is  the  way, 
and  the  only  way,  in  which  either  science 
or  philosophy  can  advance. 

And  here  the  question  may  reasonably 
be  asked,  since  we  have  science,  What  is 
the  need  or  the  use  of  philosophy?  What 
is  philosophy,  anyhow?  Well,  I  repeat, 
philosophy  is  the  attempt  to  answer 
the  question  which  some  men  ask  about 
life  and  experience,  "What  does  it  all 
mean?  What  is  the  good  of  it  all?" 
Now,  there  are  many  sciences — mathe- 
matics, astronomy,  physics,  chemistry, 
biology,  physiology,  geology,  and  hosts  of 
others — but  not  one  of  them  even  asks, 
much  less  answers,  the  question  which  is 
the  most  interesting  question  of  all — 
What  does  our  experience  come  to? 
What  does  it  all  mean?  What  is  the  good 
of  it  all?  It  is  philosophy  and  philosophy 


1 6  Philosophy 

alone    which    puts    that    question    and 
attempts  to  answer  it. 

Each  of  the  particular  sciences  deals 
with  one  particular  set  of  facts.  Philo- 
sophy, on  the  other  hand,  is  the  attempt 
to  contemplate  all  experience  and  all 
being,  not  to  deal  with  any  one  particular 
set  of  facts  but  to  regard  them  as  forming 
one  whole,  and  to  ask  what  is  the  meaning 
of  the  whole.  No  science  does  that.  No 
science  faces  all  the  facts.  In  war  suc- 
cessful strategy  often  consists  in  taking 
the  enemy  in  detail  and  in  beating  one 
division  of  the  hostile  army  after  the 
other.  And  that  is  the  kind  of  strategy 
that  science  employs.  Instead  of  attack- 
ing the  problems  presented  by  nature  all 
at  once,  science  takes  the  problems  singly 
and  deals  with  them  one  at  a  time.  That 
is  why  there  are  so  many  sciences;  each 
is  told  off  to  do  its  special  work  and  deal 
with  its  own  particular  problems.  Each, 
therefore,  can  give  us  information  about 
its  own  particular  department  of  know- 
ledge, while  none  can  tell  us  anything 


Philosophy  and  Science        17 

about  the  work  of  any  other  science. 
Still  less  can  any  one  science  undertake 
to  sum  up  all  the  work  of  all  the  other 
sciences. 

As  I  have  said,  no  science  faces  all  the 
facts.  The  strategy  of  science — the  uni- 
form method  of  all  the  sciences — con- 
sists in  dividing  the  enemy's  forces,  as  it 
were,  and  so  beating  them  in  detail. 
Every  object  has  a  host  of  various  quali- 
ties, and  each  of  those  qualities  is  dealt 
with  separately  by  a  separate  science — its 
colour  by  optics,  its  weight  by  physics, 
its  chemical  constitution  by  chemistry, 
its  organism  by  physiology,  and  so  on. 
Of  course,  the  colour  of  a  thing  does  not 
exist  separately  from  the  thing;  nor  can 
you  take  the  weight  out  of  a  thing,  and 
carry  off  the  weight  into  one  room  whilst 
you  leave  the  thing  without  any  weight  in 
the  other.  All  you  can  really  do  is  to 
concentrate  your  attention  on  one  of 
the  many  qualities  that  a  thing  possesses, 
and  dismiss  from  attention  all  the  other 
qualities.  And  when  we  do  this,  we  are 


1 8  Philosophy 

said  to  abstract  that  particular  quality 
from  the  thing;  and  the  quality  itself  is 
called  an  abstraction.  These  qualities — 
these  abstract  qualities — can  be  studied 
by  themselves  in  one  way  only,  and 
that  is  by  pretending  that  they  exist 
by  themselves.  And  the  study  of  such 
abstractions  is  what  is  called  science. 

All  sciences  are  abstract  sciences.  No 
one  of  them  deals  with  things  as  wholes; 
every  science  deals  with  some  one  quality 
of  things — that  is  to  say,  with  some 
abstraction.  Every  science  studies  some 
one  aspect  of  reality  separately;  no  one 
science  studies  all  the  aspects  of  reality 
together.  And  yet  it  is  very  necessary 
that  all  the  aspects  of  reality — that  is  to 
say,  the  whole  of  our  experience  should 
be  studied  together,  because  the  question 
will  arise,  What  does  it  all  come  to? 
What  is  the  meaning  of  it  all?  And  that 
is  just  the  question  which  no  science 
undertakes  to  answer.  And  the  reason 
why  no  science  even  attempts  to  answer 
the  question  is  that  every  science  is 


Philosophy  and  Science         19 

abstract;  every  science  deals  with  this 
or  that  abstract  quality  of  things.  No 
one  science  deals  with  all  the  qualities  of 
any  single  thing.  Much  less  does  any 
science  deal  with  all  things  together,  and 
ask,  What  do  they  all  come  to?  What 
is  the  meaning  of  them  as  a  whole? 

Science,  then,  is  abstract  and  studies 
abstractions,  not  things  as  wholes.  It 
takes  things  to  pieces,  as  it  were,  and 
studies  the  pieces  separately.  Or  rather 
it  pretends  to  take  them  to  pieces,  and  to 
take  the  weight  of  a  thing,  or  the  colour 
of  a  thing,  and  to  study  these  abstrac- 
tions. But  of  course  it  is  impossible  to 
separate  the  weight  from  a  material 
thing,  just  as  it  is  impossible  for  the  thing 
to  exist  without  weight.  And  science 
does  not  imagine  that  a  material  thing  can 
exist  without  weight,  or  that  weight  exists 
apart  from  material  things.  Science 
knows  that  these  are  abstractions,  and 
that  the  abstract  sciences  deal  with 
abstractions  and  not  with  wholes.  Sci- 
ence then  is  abstract  in  this  way. 


20  Philosophy 

But  science  is  doubly  abstract,  for  it  is 
abstract  in  another  way  also.  The  man 
of  science  concentrates  his  attention  on 
some  one  of  the  many  qualities  that  a 
thing  possesses,  and  studies  it,  and  gains 
some  knowledge  of  it.  The  thing  could 
not  be  studied  unless  it  were  there;  nor 
could  it  be  studied  unless  the  student  were 
there  to  study  it  and  gain  some  knowledge 
about  it.  If  the  thing  did  not  exist  it 
could  not  be  known  to  the  student;  and 
neither  could  it  be  known  to  the  student 
if  the  student  did  not  exist.  Both  must 
be  there — the  student  and  the  thing. 
But  though  both  must  be  there,  science 
does  not  attend  to  both.  The  thing  has 
many  qualities — weight,  size,  colour,  and 
so  on — but  any  particular  science  attends 
to  only  one  particular  quality,  and  dis- 
misses the  other  qualities  from  attention. 
So,  too,  though  both  the  student  and  the 
thing  studied  must  be  present,  if  any 
scientific  knowledge  of  the  thing  is  to  be 
attained,  science  attends  only  to  the  thing 
studied,  and  pays  no  attention  to  the 


Philosophy  and  Science        21 

student.  His  hopes  and  fears,  his  feelings 
of  triumph  or  of  disappointment,  as  his 
experiment  succeeds  or  fails,  matter  no 
more  to  science  than  the  clothes  he  wears 
or  the  cut  of  his  hair.  Science  is  con- 
cerned only  with  the  thing — or  rather 
the  abstraction — studied,  not  with  the 
student  or  his  indigestion  or  the  dirtiness 
of  his  hands.  All  those  things — real 
though  they  may  be — science  dismisses 
from  attention.  It  is  not  the  student 
that  science  is  attending  to  or  cares  about, 
but  the  experiment.  The  student  may  be 
dismissed  from  attention,  just  as  all  the 
other  qualities  of  the  thing,  except  the 
one  quality  that  is  under  examination, 
may  be  dismissed.  And  science  does 
dismiss  the  student  from  attention. 

Hence  it  is  that  science  is  doubly 
abstract.  It  is  abstract  in  the  first  place 
because  it  dismisses  from  attention  all 
qualities  except  the  one  under  investiga- 
tion, and  pretends  that  that  one  alone 
exists ;  and  it  is  abstract  in  the  next  place 
because  it  dismisses  the  student  from 


22  Philosophy 

attention  and  pretends  that  the  thing 
under  investigation  alone  exists. 

Now,  so  long  as  every  one  remembers 
that  the  thing  tinder  investigation  does 
not  exist  by  itself,  and  could  not  be  under 
investigation  and  could  not  be  known, 
unless  there  were  some  one  there  by  whom 
it  was  investigated  and  to  whom  it  was 
known,  so  long  no  harm  is  done.  But 
this  simple  fact  is  not  always  remembered ; 
it  is  sometimes  forgotten,  and  then  those 
who  forget  it  imagine  that  the  thing 
under  investigation  can  exist  all  by  itself. 
Yet  the  notion  that  the  thing  exists 
all  by  itself  is  an  abstraction  of  just  the 
same  kind  as  the  notion  that  weight  can 
exist  by  itself  apart  from  material  things, 
or  matter  exist  without  weight.  We 
never  find  matter  apart  from  weight, 
or  weight  apart  from  matter.  And  we 
never  find  ourselves  apart  from  every- 
thing we  know.  Neither  do  we  ever 
find  the  things  we  know  apart  from 
ourselves.  How  can  we?  If  we  find 
them,  we  know  them;  and  if  we  find  and 


Philosophy  and  Science         23 

know  them,  we  of  course  must  be  there 
and  they,  too,  must  be  there.  We  can 
pretend,  by  abstraction,  that  they  alone 
are  there;  we  can  concentrate  our  atten- 
tion upon  our  work  or  upon  some  scene 
of  beauty  or  of  horror,  and  become  so 
absorbed  in  it  as  to  forget  ourselves  and 
our  own  existence.  But  we  are  there 
all  the  same.  If  we  forget  our  own 
existence,  we  must  be  there  to  do  so. 

Just  then  as  weight  by  itself  is  an 
abstraction,  and  not  a  reality,  so,  too, 
things  by  themselves  are  an  abstraction 
and  not  a  reality.  Weight  is  never  found 
in  the  abstract,  but  always  in  combi- 
nation with  many  other  qualities.  And 
so,  too,  things  are  never  found  in  the 
abstract  and  by  themselves;  they  are 
always  found  by  somebody — or  else  they 
are  not  found  at  all.  We  never  find 
the  things  we  know,  apart  from  our- 
selves. Neither  do  we  ever  find  our- 
selves apart  from  all  that  we  know. 

We  can  think  of  ourselves  apart  from 
things,  just  as  we  can  think  of  things 


24  Philosophy 

apart  from  ourselves.  But  in  both  cases 
we  are  thinking  of  abstractions  and  not  of 
realities.  Things  apart  from  us  are  un- 
real abstractions;  and  we,  apart  from 
things,  are  equally  abstract  and  unreal. 

No  one  would  maintain  that  the  inside 
of  a  curve  could  be  found  without  the 
outside,  or  could  exist  without  it.  You 
can,  of  course,  concentrate  your  atten- 
tion on  what  is  inside  and  dismiss  what 
is  outside  from  attention.  But  the  one 
side  cannot  exist  without  the  other;  they 
cannot  be  divorced.  And  science,  which 
deals  with  one  quality  apart  from  others, 
or  things  apart  from  the  mind  that 
studies  them,  does  not  really  divorce 
them;  it  simply  considers  the  inside  of 
the  curve  by  itself  or  the  outside  by  itself. 
It  cannot  separate  them,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  they  are  inseparable. 

But  though  the  inside  and  the  outside 
of  a  curve  cannot  be  separated,  they  are 
quite  distinguishable,  and,  in  a  way, 
opposed  to  each  other.  So,  too,  the 
person  or  subject  who  attends  to  some- 


Philosophy  and  Science        25 

thing  is  quite  distinguishable  from  the 
object  to  which  he  attends,  and  is,  in  a 
way,  opposed  to  it. 

Perhaps,  however,  you  will  feel  that  the 
subject  or  person  who  attends  to  things  is 
not  always  attending  to  the  same  thing. 
And  that  is  undeniable.  But  if  you  are 
not  attending  to  one  thing,  you  are  to 
another;  so  long  as  you  are  conscious  at 
all,  you  are  conscious  of  something.  You 
are  always  aware  of  some  object  or  other. 
You — the  subject — can't  get  on  without 
some  object.  You  are,  let  us  say,  the 
outside  of  the  curve.  Well !  you  can't  get 
on  without  an  inside. 

But  what  about  things?  Well!  are 
they  things  that  anybody  knows,  or 
things  that  nobody  knows?  If  they  are 
things  nobody  knows,  no  one  need  pay 
any  attention  to  them — indeed,  nobody 
can.  And  if  they  are  things  that  are 
known,  why!  then  they  are  objects  of 
attention,  the  inside  of  that  curve  of 
which  the  mind  is  the  outside — or,  if 
you  like  it  better,  they  are  the  outside  of 


26  Philosophy 

that  curve  of  which  the  mind  is  the 
inside. 

But  the  root  of  the  whole  matter  and 
the  key  to  all  philosophy  is  that  the  two 
sides  of  the  curve,  though  distinguish- 
able, are  inseparable.  Subject  and  object 
cannot  be  divorced.  We  may  consider 
the  one  apart  from  the  other.  But  if  we 
do  so,  we  are  considering  an  abstraction 
and  not  a  reality.  We  may  consider 
matter  apart  from  mind,  or  mind  apart 
from  matter;  we  may  consider  the  subject 
apart  from  the  object,  or  the  object 
apart  from  the  subject.  But  in  either 
case  we  are  starting  from  an  abstraction 
and  not  from  a  reality. 

We  may  put  our  backs  to  the  inside  of 
the  curve  and  walk  away  from  it,  or  we 
may  put  our  backs  to  the  outside  of  the 
curve  and  walk  away  in  the  opposite 
direction.  And,  whichever  we  do,  the 
further  we  go,  the  further  away  we  get 
from  reality.  On  one  side  of  the  curve 
lies  matter  and  the  world  of  material 
objects;  on  the  other  lies  mind  and  its 


Philosophy  and  Science         27 

various  manifestations.  Whether  we  go 
forward  into  the  world  of  material  objects 
or  into  the  sphere  of  mind  and  its  mani- 
festations, we  are  plunging  deeper  and 
deeper  into  a  collection  of  abstractions, 
and  getting  further  and  further  away 
from  reality. 

If  we  go  in  the  one  direction  we  find 
nothing  but  matter  and  motion;  and 
then  we  shall  be  tempted  to  proclaim 
that  there  is  no  reality  but  matter  in 
motion.  If  we  go  in  the  other  direction 
we  shall  find  nothing  but  mental  states 
and  mental  processes;  and  then  we  shall 
be  tempted  to  proclaim  that  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  matter,  but  only  mental 
processes  and  mental  states.  But  the 
truth  is  that  matter  apart  from  mind, 
or  mind  apart  from  objects,  is  a  mere 
abstraction,  an  unreality.  This  I  shall 
dwell  on  at  greater  length  in  the  next 
chapter.  For  the  moment  I  wish  to 
consider  an  argument  that  may  already 
have  suggested  itself  to  your  minds. 

It   is   this.     Granted,   you   may   say, 


28  Philosophy 

that  every  science  deals  with  abstractions, 
such  as  the  weight  of  things,  or  colour, 
or  number;  surely  that  is  the  proper 
method  of  procedure:  let  us  attack  the 
various  problems  in  detail  first,  and 
afterwards  let  us  piece  our  results  to- 
gether. The  only  way,  you  may  say,  in 
which  to  see  how  anything  is  made  is  to 
take  it  to  pieces,  and  then  to  put  it 
together  again. 

Now,  this  might  be  a  very  admirable 
method  of  procedure,  if  it  were  possible 
with  the  things  of  nature  as  it  is  with  the 
things  made  by  man.  But  it  is  not 
possible.  A  watch  that  man  has  made, 
man  can  take  to  pieces  and  put  together 
again.  An  egg  that  a  hen  has  laid  may 
be  taken  to  pieces  or  analysed  by  man — 
but  he  can't  put  it  together  again. 

And  there  are  some  things  that  man 
cannot  take  to  pieces ;  he  cannot  take  one 
side  of  a  curve  and  put  it  down  here,  and 
take  the  other  side  of  a  curve  and  put 
it  down  there.  He  cannot  separate  him- 
self from  all  the  things  that  he  knows  and 


Philosophy  and  Science        29 

put  them  down  by  themselves  in  one  place 
and  himself  without  any  of  them  in  an- 
other. Still  less — even  if  he  could — 
would  it  be  possible  to  bring  them  to- 
gether again.  Yet  that  is  precisely  what 
was  suggested  just  now  as  the  proper 
method  of  procedure.  It  was  in  effect 
suggested  that  man  and  the  things  he 
knows,  or  the  subject  and  the  object,  are, 
as  it  were,  the  two  ends  of  a  stick;  and 
that,  if  you  want  to  separate  them  and 
study  them  apart  from  each  other,  you 
have  only  got  to  cut  the  stick  in  two, 
and  there  you  are. 

But  you  cannot  separate  the  subject 
and  the  object  in  that  way,  just  as  you 
cannot  cut  the  end  off  a  stick.  Perhaps, 
however,  as  some  persons  think  that  the 
subject  can  be  separated  from  the  object, 
you  think  you  can  cut  the  end  off  a  stick. 
There  is  the  stick,  with  two  ends,  Are 
you  quite  so  sure  that  you  can  cut  one 
end  off?  Cut  a  piece  off,  and  then 
tell  me  how  many  ends  the  stick  has !  Of 
course  it  still  has  two,  and  always  will 


30  Philosophy 

have  two,  however  many  pieces  you  chop 
off.  And  so,  too,  you  never  can  chop  off 
the  object  from  the  subject.  Every  stick 
has  two  ends  all  the  time.  And  they 
cannot  be  separated,  any  more  than  the 
two  sides  of  a  curve  can;  or  than  sub- 
ject and  object — you  and  all  that  you 
know — can  be  separated. 

And  now  to  sum  up  this  chapter. 

Philosophy  consists  in  reflecting  upon 
experience  for  the  purpose  of  discovering 
whether  experience,  as  a  whole,  has  any 
meaning;  and,  if  so,  what  meaning^  But 
experience  is  continually  increasing;  and, 
as  experience  never  ceases,  philosophy 
never  comes  to  an  end;  it  never  can  be 
final.  The  dogmatist,  however,  thinks 
that  his  explanation  of  the  world  and  life 
is  final;  while  the  sceptic  in  philosophy 
thinks  that  no  explanation  whatever  will 
hold  water;  he  thinks  that  experience  has 
no  meaning  whatever.  Both  the  dog- 
matist and  the  sceptic,  however,  are 
wrong ;  the  dogmatist  is  wrong  in  thinking 
that  any  explanation  is  final;  the  sceptic 


Philosophy  and  Science         31 

is  wrong  in  denying  that  experience  is  a 
whole.  The  sceptic  says  that  experience 
cannot  be  a  whole  because  it  is  continually 
increasing.  And  he  is  wrong  in  saying 
so,  because  a  circle,  for  instance,  is  a 
whole,  and  yet  it  may  expand  and  increase 
continually  without  ceasing  to  be  a  circle 
and  a  whole.  We  shall  therefore  hold 
that  experience  is  a  whole.  But  we  shall 
not  lay  it  down  dogmatically  that  experi- 
ence is  a  whole ;  we  shall  always  recognise 
that  this  is  only  a  supposition  or  hy- 
pothesis that  we  put  forward;  and  that 
we  have  perpetually  to  inquire  whether 
it  does  really  explain  all  the  facts.  In 
this  respect  philosophy  is  like  science ;  for 
science  also  makes  hypotheses  and  is 
constantly  modifying  them  so  that  they 
may  fit  all  the  facts.  But  though  philo- 
sophy and  science  both  make  hypotheses 
and  then  modify  them  to  suit  the  facts — 
though  philosophy  and  science  are  alike 
in  this  respect — yet  there  is  a  great 
difference  between  them.  The  difference 
is  this :  Each  science  deals  with  one  par- 


32  Philosophy 

ticular  set  of  facts  and  no  one  science  deals 
with  all  the  facts  of  experience,  whereas 
it  is  with  all  the  facts  and  with  experience 
as  a  whole  that  philosophy  deals;  for  the 
object  and  purpose  of  philosophy  is  to 
inquire,  What  does  all  our  experience 
come  to — What  is  the  meaning  of  it  all? 
That  is  the  difference  between  science 
and  philosophy:  philosophy  deals  with 
experience  as  a  whole — with  life  as  it  is 
lived.  Science  deals  with  abstractions: 
it  treats  of  the  movements  of  the  stars, 
or  of  the  weight  or  the  colour  or  the 
numerical  relations  of  things.  And  these 
are  all  abstractions.  Again,  the  things 
studied  by  science  are  studied  by  some- 
body and  known  to  somebody;  they  could 
not  be  known  unless  they  were  known  by 
someone.  But  this  fact  is  set  aside  by 
science.  Science  abstracts  the  things 
known,  and  treats  them  as  though  they 
existed  without  being  known.  But  the 
truth  is  that  knowledge  and  existence  are 
like  the  two  sides  of  a  curve ;  the  two  sides 
are  different  in  a  way,  and  yet  they  are 


Philosophy  and  Science        33 

inseparable.  Now,  it  is  from  that  fact 
that  we  ought  to  start,  that  the  curve 
has  two  sides.  But  some  people  think 
that  we  need  only  attend  to  one  of  the 
two  sides,  to  the  side  on  which  matter  is, 
or  to  the  side  on  which  mind  is.  They 
even  think  we  can  deny  the  existence 
of  the  other  side.  It  seems  rather  strange 
to  suppose  that  a  curve  has  only  one  side, 
or  that  a  stick  has  only  one  end;  but  we 
must  inquire  what  grounds  there  are  for 
thinking  so.  And  in  the  next  chapter 
we  will  inquire. 


CHAPTER  II 

MATERIALISM  AND  IDEALISM 

I  SAID  in  the  last  chapter  that  our  experi- 
ence of  life  is  sometimes  bitter — so  bitter 
that  we  cannot  help  asking,  What  does  it 
all  mean?  What  is  the  good  of  it  all? 
And  I  pointed  out  that  philosophy  is  just 
the  attempt  to  answer  these  questions. 
Philosophy  takes  experience,  all  together, 
as  a  whole,  and  asks  what  it  all  means. 
Further,  I  argued  that  there  can  be  no 
experience,  except  where  there  is  some 
one  who  experiences  something.  The 
some  one  and  the  something  are,  as  it 
were,  the  two  sides  of  a  curve.  On  the 
inside  of  the  curve  is  the  internal  world 
of  our  thoughts  and  feelings,  sensations 
and  ideas,  our  pleasures  and  pains ;  on  the 
outside  of  the  curve  is  the  external  world 
of  moving,  material  things.  On  the 

34 


Materialism  and  Idealism       35 

inside  of  the  curve  is  mind,  on  the  out- 
side is  matter.  On  the  one  side  is  the 
subject;  on  the  other,  the  object,  of 
experience. 

Now,  constructive  philosophers  assume 
that  experience  is  really,  if  we  could  only 
see  it  properly,  a  whole,  and  an  intelligi- 
ble whole,  with  some  good  in  it ;  and  they 
try  to  show  that  such  is  the  nature  of  ex- 
perience. Destructive  philosophers,  how- 
ever, that  is  to  say,  sceptical  philosophers, 
try  to  show  that  no  such  explanation 
does  explain  all  the  facts  in  an  intelligible 
manner  for  the  simple  reason  that,  as 
it  seems  to  them,  the  facts  are  unintel- 
ligible. But  constructive  philosophers, 
though  they  agree  that  experience  is  a 
whole,  and  that  the  business  of  philosophy 
is  to  try  to  understand  it,  are  by  no  means 
agreed  as  to  what  it  is  that  we  have 
experience  of.  Some  think  that  moving 
material  things,  outside  us,  are  the  only 
realities  of  which  we  have  experience. 
Others  think  that  the  only  things  we 
know  for  certain  are  our  own  sensations. 


36  Philosophy 

Let  us  then  examine  each  of  these  two 
views;  and  let  us  begin  with  the  one  which 
asserts  that  the  outside  of  the  curve,  the 
external  world  of  matter,  and  material, 
moving  things,  the  objects  of  which  we 
have  experience,  alone  are  real.  With 
this  view  we  all  must  have  a  certain 
sympathy.  At  any  rate  it  is  a  view 
which  is  easily  understood.  If  we  are 
asked  what  reality  is,  we  may  not  be 
able  to  say  offhand;  but  we  can  easily 
point  to  real  things.  The  walls  which  we 
see,  the  desk  which  we  touch,  the  chair  on 
which  we  sit,  and  the  ground  on  which  it 
rests  are  all  real  things.  And  they  are  all 
material;  they  are  all  matter  in  one  form 
or  another.  Everything  that  we  can  see, 
touch,  hear,  smell,  and  taste  is  real  and 
material.  The  earth  on  which  we  live 
and  the  countless  stars  around  it  are  all 
real  and  all  of  them  are  matter. 

Further  we  know  from  personal  obser- 
vation that  many  of  these  material  things 
move;  and  science  tells  us  that  every  one 
of  these  things  is  made  up  of  molecules, 


Materialism  and  Idealism       37 

which  are  all  of  them  vibrating  with 
great  rapidity,  though  the  molecules  are 
so  infinitely  small  that  we  cannot  see  or 
feel  their  vibration  and  motion.  Thus  of 
every  object  we  perceive  or  can  perceive, 
whether  by  the  senses  or  by  means  of  the 
scientific  imagination,  of  every  object  and 
of  the  whole  objective  world  we  can  say 
that  it  is  matter  in  motion. 

Not  only  can  we  say  of  every  object  and 
of  the  whole  objective  world — of  all  on 
the  outside  of  the  curve — that  it  is  matter 
in  motion,  but,  thanks  to  the  labours 
of  science,  we  even  know  many  of  the 
laws  according  to  which  matter  moves. 

First  of  all  there  is  what  is  called  the 
Law  of  Universal  Causation — that  is,  the 
great  law  that  nothing  whatever  can 
happen  without  a  cause.  The  value  of 
this  law  for  the  purposes  of  science  is 
immense,  for,  even  when  we  do  not  know 
what  is  the  cause  of  a  thing  in  which 
we  are  for  any  reason  interested,  we  may 
be  sure  that  it  must  have  a  cause;  and 
so  long  as  we  know  that,  we  can  go  on 


38  Philosophy 

trying  to  find  it  out,  until  we  do  find  it 
out.  That  is  the  faith  which  supports  the 
men  of  science  in  their  long  labours ;  they 
know  there  is  a  cause  for  everything 
that  happens,  however  long  and  arduous 
the  search  for  it  may  be. 

Next,  there  is  another  great  law  which 
is  called  the  Law  of  the  Uniformity  of 
Nature.  Not  only  must  everything  have 
a  cause,  as  the  Law  of  Universal  Cau- 
sation affirms,  but  a  cause  must  always — 
if  not  counteracted  by  some  other  cause — 
have  its  effect ;  and  that  is  the  Law  of  the 
Uniformity  of  Nature;  the  same  cause 
always  has,  or  tends  to  have,  the  same 
effect. 

Indeed,  the  Law  of  the  Uniformity  of 
Nature  goes  further,  for  it  assumes  that 
the  same  causes  are  uniformly  at  work. 
It  is  because  the  same  causes  are  uni- 
formly and  always  at  work  that  we  get 
to  know  how  they  work.  The  Law  of 
Universal  Causation  would  not  be  of 
much  use  to  us,  if  no  cause  ever  operated 
more  than  once,  and  if  at  every  moment 


Materialism  and  Idealism       39 

some  new  cause  were  at  work  that  had 
never  acted  before,  and  never  would  act 
again.  In  such  a  case  the  Law  of  Univer- 
sal Causation  might  still  be  true,  it  might 
still  be  true  that  everything  had  a  cause; 
but  if  at  every  moment  some  new  cause 
came  into  operation  that  we  had  never 
come  across  before,  there  would  be  no 
Uniformity  in  Nature,  and  we  could  never 
possibly  know  what  to  expect  next. 

But  if  these  laws  of  the  Uniformity  of 
Nature  and  of  Universal  Causation  are 
true,  we  can  know,  or  can  learn,  not  only 
the  effects  of  causes  which  are  at  work, 
but  we  can  discover  also  the  causes  of  the 
things  we  see  around  us.  We  can  see, 
or  science  can  see  and  tell  us,  how  the 
world  around  us  has  come  to  be  what  it 
is.  And  that  is  precisely  what  the  theory 
of  Evolution  does  undertake  to  tell  us. 
It  shows  us  how  the  various  species  of 
animals  and  plants  have  come  to  be  what 
they  are;  it  traces  them  back  to  the 
earliest  speck  of  protoplasm.  It  shows 
how  the  earth  at  one  time  was  a  molten 


40  Philosophy 

mass — as  indeed,  except  for  a  thin  crust 
on  its  surface,  it  is  now.  It  shows  how 
at  a  still  earlier  period  the  whole  of  what 
is  now  the  solar  system  was  a  nebulous 
vapour.  But  nebulous  though  it  was, 
the  vapour  was  then,  as  the  earth  is  now, 
matter  in  motion. 

And  not  only  does  the  theory  of  Evo- 
lution tell  us  what  has  been,  and  how  it 
has  come  to  be  what  it  is;  not  only  does  it 
tell  us  the  causes  of  all  that  we  see  around 
us,  but  it  also  foretells  the  effect  of  the 
causes  at  work.  The  earth  and  the  sun 
must  eventually  lose  all  their  heat,  for 
their  heat  is  radiating  away  into  space 
as  hard  as  it  can;  the  earth  will  eventu- 
ally become  uninhabitable,  as  the  moon  is 
now,  for  it  will  freeze  down  and  at  last  it 
will  have  neither  heat  nor  light  to  give 
out,  but  will  become  like  one  of  the  other 
black  invisible  bodies  of  matter  in  motion 
which  are  moving  about  in  space. 

All  this  follows  from  the  Law  of  the 
Uniformity  of  Nature.  The  same  causes 
are  always  at  work,  and  all  tend  to 


Materialism  and  Idealism       41 

produce  the  same  results.  There  is  no 
freedom  in  nature,  no  variety,  no  spon- 
taneity; everything  is  according  to  law — 
the  Laws  of  Nature.  There  is  only  one 
course  which  events  can  follow — that 
which  is  determined  for  them  by  the 
laws  of  Causation  and  the  Uniformity  of 
Nature.  If  only  we  knew  all  the  causes 
at  work  now  and  could  understand  the 
way  in  which  they  worked,  and  worked  in 
with  one  another,  we  could  foretell  and 
foresee  with  absolute  certainty  every- 
thing that  is  to  happen.  All  that  has 
happened,  and  all  that  will  happen,  is 
fixed  absolutely  and  irrevocably.  No- 
thing can  alter  it.  It  is  all  predeter- 
mined, and  we  cannot  modify  or  change 
it  by  one  hair's  breadth.  We  might  as 
well  be  non-existent,  for  anything  we  can 
do  to  change  it. 

And  that  brings  us  round  to  the  funda- 
mental question,  with  which  we  started 
in  the  first  chapter,  What  is  the  good  of  it 
all?  We  said  that  philosophy  is  the 
attempt  to  answer,  or  at  any  rate  to  see  if 


42  Philosophy 

there  is  any  answer  to  the  questions  which 
we  cannot  help  asking — What  does  it  all 
mean?  What  is  the  good  of  it  all? 
Well,  then,  how  far  does  the  philosophy, 
which  I  have  been  expounding  to  you 
for  the  last  few  minutes,  seem  to  you  to 
answer  those  questions?  It  started,  you 
will  remember,  from  the  assumption  that 
the  only  real  things  are  things  that  we 
can  see  and  touch — that  is  to  say,  that 
the  only  reality  is  matter  in  motion — 
that  the  things  on  the  outside  of  the  curve 
are  real,  and  that  the  things  on  the  inside, 
our  sensations  and  thoughts  and  feelings, 
are  not.  If  this  assumption  leads  to  con- 
clusions which  are  felt  to  be  satisfactory, 
we  shall  accept  the  conclusions.  If  not, 
we  will  try  some  other  assumption.  But, 
at  the  present,  what  I  wish  to  ask  you  is 
whether  the  conclusions  are  satisfactory. 
Starting  from  experience  we  asked, 
What  does  it  all  mean?  What  is  the 
good  of  it  all?  We  are  told  that  the 
only  reality  we  find  in  our  experience  is 
matter  in  motion;  and  consequently  that 


Materialism  and  Idealism       43 

the  only  meaning,  in  all  that  we  do  and 
suffer  and  go  through,  is  that  particles 
of  matter  move  about  according  to  the 
Laws  of  Universal  Causation  and  the 
Uniformity  of  Nature.  That  is  the  only 
lesson  there  is  to  be  learnt ! 

It  may  be  one  lesson  that  is  to  be 
learnt,  but  it  certainly  is  not  the  only 
one;  nor  is  it  the  most  important  or  the 
most  interesting  one.  It  may  be  true 
that  particles  of  matter  are  continually 
in  motion;  but  there  are  many  other 
truths  which  are  of  much  higher  value. 
The  experience  that  each  one  of  us  has 
gone  through  means  much  more  than 
that.  What  does  all  our  experience  mean? 
It  is  absurd  to  say  that  its  only  meaning 
is  that  particles  of  matter  move  about. 
That  may  be  true,  but  it  is  not  the  whole 
truth  or  the  fundamental  truth.  It  is  not 
a  satisfactory  explanation  of  experience 
— indeed,  it  is  not  an  explanation  at  all. 
If  experience  is  to  be  explained,  it  is 
necessary  to  show  that  it  has  some  good 
end.  If  it  has  no  good  end,  it  is  no  good; 


44  Philosophy 

and  there  was  no  good  in  our  going 
through  it.  An  explanation  of  our  experi- 
ence, if  it  is  to  be  a  satisfactory  explana- 
tion, must  explain  what  is  the  good  of  it. 
And  what  conceivable  good  is  there  in 
particles  of  matter  being  moved  about? 
The  philosophy  then — the  material- 
istic philosophy — which  endeavours  to 
explain  the  whole  of  our  experience  by 
saying  that  there  is  nothing  in  it  but 
matter  in  motion,  that  what  our  experi- 
ence all  comes  to  is  that  there  is  no  reality 
but  matter  in  motion,  proves  to  be  an 
unsatisfactory  explanation,  because  it 
can  give  no  answer  to  the  very  natural 
question,  Then  what  is  the  good  of  it  all? 
But  if  Materialism  is  reduced  to  admit 
that  it  cannot  see  or  say  what  good  there 
is  in  it  all,  it  may  be  that  Materialism  is 
based  upon  an  assumption  which  is  false. 
Now,  the  assumption  on  which  Material- 
ism is  based  is  a  double  or  twofold 
assumption.  It  is  the  assumption,  first, 
that  the  material  things  which  we  see, 
feel,  and  touch,  and  hear  are  real;  and 


Materialism  and  Idealism       45 

next,  that  those  material  things  are  the 
only  reality  of  which  we  have  experience. 
At  first  sight  it  may  seem,  however, 
that  to  say  that  the  material  things 
around  us  are  real  is  not  an  assumption. 
It  may  seem  to  you  that  it  is  not  an 
assumption  at  all,  but  a  simple  fact,  that 
the  material  things  around  us — the  walls 
and  the  ground,  the  tables  and  chairs, 
and  so  on — are  real.  We  will,  there- 
fore, for  the  present  not  argue  that  point, 
though  we  may  have  to  come  back  to  it 
hereafter. 

But  what  about  the  other  point,  that 
the  material  things  around  us  are  the 
only  real  things  that  there  are?  That 
plainly  is  an  assumption;  there  may  quite 
possibly,  and  quite  conceivably  be,  for 
anything  we  know,  other  things  that  are 
real  and  yet  are  not  material  things. 
Your  thoughts,  feelings,  ideas,  sensations, 
are  quite  real,  but  you  cannot  see  or  touch 
a  thought.  You  may  talk  of  an  idea  as 
a  great  idea,  yet  you  cannot  measure 
it  with  a  tape.  You  may  speak  of  weighty 


46  Philosophy 

arguments,  yet  you  cannot  really  put 
them  on  a  pair  of  scales  and  weigh  them. 
Your  thoughts  and  ideas  are  quite  real, 
though  you  cannot  measure  them  with  a 
yard-measure,  or  touch  them  with  your 
fingers.  They  are  quite  real  though  they 
are  not  material  things. 

Thus,  though  it  may  be  true  that 
material  things  are  real,  it  is  an  assump- 
tion that  material  things  are  the  only 
realities  we  are  aware  of.  Now,  the 
assumptions  that  we  make  in  the  ordinary 
course  of  life  may  turn  out  to  be  true,  or 
they  may  turn  out  to  be  false.  When  we 
make  an  assumption  we  think  it  may, 
or  even  that  it  will  probably,  turn  out  to 
be  true,  but  we  don't  know  that  it  will. 
It  is  only  experience  which  will  show. 
I  assume  that  my  train  will  be  punctual. 
That  is  an  assumption  which  may  turn 
out  true  or  not.  Experience  alone  will 
show  whether  it  is  or  is  not.  And  the 
assumptions  we  make  in  philosophy  are 
of  just  the  same  kind:  when  we  make 
them,  they  seem  likely  to  turn  out  true, 


Materialism  and  Idealism       47 

but  experience  alone  will  show  whether 
they  prove  true. 

Thus  in  philosophy  some  of  us  assume 
that  there  is  a  meaning  in  our  experience 
of  the  world,  and  that  there  is  some  good 
in  life.  But  whether  the  assumption  is 
true  or  not  depends  on  what  experience 
has  to  say.  So,  too,  in  philosophy  some 
people  assume  not  only  that  material 
things  are  real,  but  that  they  are  the  only 
realities.  Whether  this  assumption  will 
explain  all  the  facts  is  a  question  which 
can  be  tested  only  by  experience.  If 
in  your  experience  there  are  things,  such 
as  joy  and  grief,  thoughts  and  ideas, 
which  are  indubitably  real  and  undoubt- 
edly not  material  things,  then  the  assump- 
tion, that  matter  in  motion  alone  exists 
and  alone  is  real,  is  an  assumption  which 
does  not  account  for  all  the  facts.  And 
in  philosophy  what  we  want  is  an  assump- 
tion which  will  fit  in  with  the  whole  of  our 
experience,  and  account  for  it  all. 

Now,  the  theory  of  Materialism  is  a 
philosophical  theory.  That  is  to  say,  it 


48  Philosophy 

is  an  assumption  which  is  made  in  the 
belief  that  all  the  facts  of  experience  will 
fit  into  it,  when  we  come  to  examine 
them.  If  some  of  the  undoubted  facts 
of  experience  do  not  fit  in  with  it,  then 
it  is  an  assumption  which  does  not 
explain  all  the  facts,  and  it  cannot  be 
accepted  as  the  correct  explanation  of  our 
experience.  Materialism  certainly  does 
not  account  for  all  the  facts.  It  is  an 
obvious  fact  that  it  is  we  who  have  ex- 
perience. That  is  just  as  plain  as  it  is 
that  there  are  things  which  we  experi- 
ence. But  Materialism  leaves  out  of 
account  us  who  have  the  experience,  and 
attends  only  to  the  things.  As  I  have 
already  said,  Materialism  sees  only  the 
things  on  the  outside  of  the  curve — the 
world  of  material  objects.  It  closes  its 
eyes  to  the  inside  of  the  curve — our 
thoughts  and  ideas  and  sensations  and 
pains  and  joys. 

Not  only  does  Materialism  close  its 
eyes  to  them  at  the  start,  and  say  that  in 
the  beginning  there  was  only  matter  in 


Materialism  and  Idealism       49 

motion;  but  it  never  accounts  for  the 
existence  of  consciousness.  Indeed,  if  it 
were  right  in  its  assumption  that  matter 
alone  really  exists,  the  consequences 
would  follow  that  our  thoughts  and  ideas, 
our  joy  and  grief,  and  our  very  con- 
sciousness do  not  exist.  But  we  have  no 
doubt  about  our  own  consciousness  and 
our  own  existence ;  and  we  see  accordingly 
that  the  assumption  on  which  Material- 
ism is  based  is  a  false  assumption,  for 
it  assumes  that  our  feelings  and  thoughts 
are  not  real.  It  is  an  assumption  made 
for  the  purpose  of  explaining  our  experi- 
ence ;  and  it  accounts  only  for  one  side  of 
our  experience,  viz.,  the  outside  of  the 
curve,  the  world  of  material  objects;  and 
it  leaves,  unexplained  and  unaccounted 
for,  the  inside  of  the  curve,  the  thoughts 
and  sensations  of  the  subject. 

It  is,  therefore,  not  wonderful  if  other 
philosophers  have  tried  to  account  for 
what  the  Materialists  have  left  unex- 
plained. The  Materialist  placed  his  back 
to  the  outside  of  the  curve  and  walked 


50  Philosophy 

forth  into  the  world  of  matter  and  mate- 
rial objects;  and  the  further  he  advanced 
the  further  away  he  got,  until  he  forgot 
and  even  denied  that  the  curve  had  an 
inside.  The  only  realities,  he  declared, 
were  the  material  things,  the  matter  in 
motion  on  the  outside  of  the  curve.  But 
since  the  thoughts  and  ideas,  the  griefs 
and  the  joys  that  we  all  have,  are  un- 
doubtedly real,  it  was  inevitable  that 
some  philosophers  should  turn  to  the 
inside  of  the  curve  and  seek  to  find  reality 
in  its  contents.  These  philosophers  place 
their  back  to  the  inner  side  of  the  curve 
and  plunge  in  that  direction  in  the  search 
for  reality.  And  we  have  now  to  follow 
them. 

And  you  will  see  at  once  that  the  fur- 
ther they  travel  and  the  deeper  they  get 
into  the  inside,  the  greater  is  the  danger 
that  they  will  forget  that  the  curve  has  an 
outside,  just  as  the  other  philosophers, 
the  Materialists,  forgot  that  it  had  an 
inside.  However,  you  are  quite  sure 
that  the  material  things  which  you  can 


Materialism  and  Idealism       51 

see,  touch,  feel,  hear,  taste,  and  smell 
are  real.  There  does  not  seem  to  you  to 
be  any  supposition  or  assumption  about 
that.  It  may  also  be  true  that  your 
sensations  and  thoughts  and  feelings  are 
real;  but  you  have  no  doubt  that  the 
chair  on  which  you  sit,  the  ground  on 
which  it  rests,  and  the  things  around  you 
are  both  material  and  real. 

You  have  no  doubt  about  the  existence 
of  matter.  You  have  the  evidence  of 
your  senses  to  prove  that  it  is  there.  You 
look  at  the  desk  and  you  have  a  sen- 
sation of  sight.  You  run  your  hand 
over  it  and  you  have  the  sensation  of 
smoothness.  You  press  your  hand  on 
it  and  you  have  the  sensation  of  resist- 
ance. Or,  you  have  an  orange  in  your 
hand  and,  when  you  peel  it,  you  have 
a  sensation  of  smell.  When  you  put 
it  to  your  mouth  you  have  the  sen- 
sation of  taste.  Or,  there  is  a  bell  in  the 
tower  and,  when  the  clapper  strikes  the 
bell,  you  have  the  sensation  of  sound. 
But  the  sensation  of  taste,  of  course,  is  in 


52  Philosophy 

your  mouth:  if  you  had  no  palate  you 
would  have  no  taste.  And  the  sensation 
of  smell  is  in  your  nostrils :  it  is  not  in  the 
rose.  The  sensation  of  sound  which 
arises,  when  the  clapper  strikes  the  bell, 
is  in  your  ears  and  not  in  the  bell:  if 
you  were  stone  deaf,  the  clapper  might 
strike  the  bell  ever  so  hard  and  you  would 
have  no  sensation  of  sound.  So  the 
sensation  of  sound  is  in  you;  it  is  not  in 
the  bell.  And  the  sensation  of  taste  is 
not  in  the  plum-pudding  in  the  shop- 
window:  it  is,  or  will  be,  in  you.  And 
so,  too,  if  nobody  smelt  the  rose,  there 
would  be  no  sensation  of  smell. 

Evidently,  therefore,  the  sensation  you 
have  when  you  smell  the  rose  is  not  the 
same  thing  as  the  rose.  And  the  sen- 
sation you  have  when  the  bell  is  rung  is 
not  the  same  thing  as  the  bell.  Nor  is  the 
taste  of  the  apple  the  same  thing  as  the 
apple.  The  sensations  of  taste  and  smell 
and  sound,  when  you  have  them,  are 
in  you,  and  not  in  the  apple  or  orange 
or  bell. 


Materialism  and  Idealism       53 

But  you  can  see  the  apple  or  the  orange, 
when  it  is  before  you.  And  since  you  can 
see  it  you  know  that  it  is  there,  a  real, 
material  thing:  seeing  is  believing.  But 
you  will  admit  that  what  you  mean  by 
seeing  a  thing  is  that  you  have  a  sen- 
sation of  sight.  And  evidently  the  sen- 
sation of  sight  is  in  you  and  not  in  the 
thing.  So  the  sensation  of  sight  is  just 
like  the  sensations  of  sound  and  smell 
and  taste:  they  are  all  in  you  and  not  in 
the  things. 

But  you  may  say,  "The  apple  is  here  in 
my  hand;  I  can  feel  it,  smooth  and  hard." 
Yes !  you  can  feel  it.  But  what  does  that 
mean?  It  means  that  you  have  a  feeling 
— the  feeling  of  smoothness  or  the  feeling 
of  firmness  and  resistance.  You  have 
the  feeling  or  sensation,  just  as  you  had 
the  sensation  of  smell  or  of  sound  or  of 
taste  or  of  sight.  And  like  those  sen- 
sations, the  sensation  of  smoothness  or 
resistance  is  in  you,  not  in  the  things. 
All  the  sensations  you  have  are,  without 
exception,  in  you. 


54  Philosophy 

But,  you  will  say,  "The  real  material 
things  are  not  in  me;  they  are  quite 
separate  from  me  and  independent  of  me 
and  my  sensations.  They  are  there!" 
Well,  then,  I  want  to  know,  first  of  all, 
what  exactly  is  there;  and,  next,  whether 
it  would  matter  if  it  was  not  there. 

Let  us  start  once  more  with  the  orange. 
When  you  have  it  in  your  hand,  you 
have  sensations  of  sight,  sensations  of 
firmness  and  roughness,  of  smell  and  of 
taste.  But  you  say  that  there  is  some- 
thing more:  there  is  the  matter  of  which 
it  is  made.  Now  what  is  this  "matter"? 
It  is  not,  you  say,  any  of  the  sensations 
which  you  have.  It  is  not  your  tasting, 
smelling,  seeing,  touching;  they  are  all 
sensations,  and  matter  is  something  dif- 
ferent from  any  sensation.  Well,  then, 
if  it  is  different  from  any  sensation  you 
ever  had,  or  ever  can  have,  what  is  it  like? 
what  can  it  be?  and  how  can  you  know  it? 
All  that  you  know  about  any  of  the 
things  around  you,  you  know  by  your 
sensations.  Go  through  everything  you 


Materialism  and  Idealism       55 

know  about  the  orange  and  you  will  find 
all  you  know  about  it  is  the  sensations 
of  sweetness  and  firmness  and  roughness 
and  smoothness,  and  so  on,  that  you 
have. 

But  you  will  obstinately  have  it  that 
over  and  above  these  sensations,  or  below 
or  behind  them,  there  is  something  more, 
which  you  call  "matter,"  and  that  this 
"matter"  is  quite  different  from  any 
sensation  that  you  have  of  it.  What  it  is, 
or  what  it  is  like,  you  cannot  possibly  say. 
And  yet  you  ask  me  to  believe  in  it.  How 
can  I? 

If  anybody  came  up  to  you,  for  in- 
stance, and  told  you  that  there  was  some- 
thing there  which  neither  he  nor  you  nor 
anyone  could  see  or  feel  or  touch  or  hear 
or  taste  or  smell,  but  he  was  sure  it  was 
there — what  should  you  think  of  him? 
Of  course  you  would  think  that  he  did 
not  know  what  he  was  talking  about. 
Well,  when  people  talk  about  "matter," 
are  you  quite  sure  that  they  know  what 
they  are  talking  about? 


56  Philosophy 

Anyhow,  it  is  not  easy  to  understand 
exactly  what  they  do  mean.  Generally, 
they  seem  to  mean,  as  I  said  just  now, 
that  matter  is  quite  different  from  any 
sensation  that  anybody  ever  has  of  it. 
And  then,  as  we  have  seen,  they  cannot 
say  what  it  is.  But  as  they,  like  you, 
are  quite  sure  that  matter  does  exist, 
would  it  help  to  improve  things  and 
make  them  a  little  more  intelligible,  if, 
instead  of  saying  that  matter  is  quite 
different  from  any  sensation  anybody  has 
of  it,  we  were  to  turn  it  round  and  say 
just  the  opposite — that  matter  and  ma- 
terial things  are  just  exactly  what  we  see, 
and  nothing  more  or  different?  That 
seems  to  remove  all  mystery  and  make 
everything  plain. 

But  how  does  the  case  stand  then? 
We  have  sensations  of  sight,  touch,  sound, 
taste,  smell;  and  when  we  ask  "And  what 
is  matter?"  we  are  now  told,  matter  is 
just  those  sensations,  and  nothing  more  or 
different.  But,  if  that  is  the  case,  then 
there  are  sensations  of  sight,  touch, 


Materialism  and  Idealism       57 

taste,  and  so  on,  but  there  is  nothing  more 
than  sensations,  nothing  different  from 
them;  and,  in  that  case,  there  is  no 
"matter." 

Once  more,  then,  we  are  driven  to  the 
conclusion  either  that  matter  does  not 
exist,  or,  at  any  rate,  that  it  is  very  diffi- 
cult to  understand  what  is  meant  by  the 
people  who  say  that  it  does  exist.  And 
this  brings  me  to  the  other  question  I 
raised  a  minute  or  two  ago:  Suppose 
matter  did  not  exist,  would  it  make  any 
very  great  difference?  If  I  have  the 
sensations  of  tasting  and  eating  a  meal 
and  of  feeling  refreshed  and  fit  to  work 
after  it,  I  am  satisfied.  Certainly  I 
shall  not  be  in  the  least  disturbed  by 
discovering  matter  does  not  exist,  or  by 
discovering  that  those  who  believe  in  it 
have  to  admit  that  it  is  something  which 
nobody  can  possibly  see  or  touch  or  taste 
or  hear  or  smell  or  feel — that  it  is  in  it- 
self something  unknown  and  unknowable. 

Now,  I  do  not  suppose  that  what  I 
have  said  is  enough  to  convince  you  that 


58  Philosophy 

matter  does  not  exist;  but  I  hope  it  is 
enough  to  show  you  that  if  anyone  asks 
you,  "What  is  matter?"  the  question  is 
not  one  which  it  is  easy  to  answer. 
Matter  is  not  the  sensations  or  feelings 
that  you  and  I  have.  And  if  you  take 
any  object,  such  as  a  chair  or  a  table, 
which  you  are  in  the  habit  of  calling  a 
material  thing,  and  ask  yourself  what  you 
actually  know  of  it,  you  will  find  that  all 
you  can  say  of  it  is  that  you  have  certain 
sensations  of  touch  and  sight,  and  so  on. 
And  if  that  is  so,  why  should  you  say 
anything  more?  Why  should  you  say 
that,  besides  the  sensations  of  touch  and 
sight  and  taste  and  sound,  and  so  on, 
which  you  have  and  which  you  know, 
there  is  something  else  which  you  don't 
know,  and  which  you  call  Matter?  Why 
not  confine  yourself  to  what  you  do  know 
from  experience — that  is,  the  fact  that 
you  have  sensations,  and  that  certain 
sensations  go  together,  so  that  when  you 
have  a  certain  sensation  of  yellowness 
and  roundness,  you  know  that  you  can 


Materialism  and  Idealism       59 

have  a  certain  sensation  of  taste?  The 
orange  will  taste  and  smell  exactly  the 
same,  whether  you  believe  that  over  and 
above  all  your  sensations  there  is  some 
mysterious  thing  which  you  call  Matter, 
or  whether  you  don't. 

Now,  there  are  some  philosophers  who 
say  that  we  know  we  have  sensations 
and  that  we  don't  know  that  there  is  any- 
thing else.  And  as  they  maintain  that 
sensations  are  the  only  reality,  they  are 
called  Sensationalists  or  the  Sensational 
philosophers.  Or  sometimes,  because 
they  do  not  believe  in  Matter,  but  do 
say  that  we  have  sensations  and  ideas, 
they  are  called  Idealists.  They  are,  of 
course,  altogether  opposed  to  the  Ma- 
terialists. 

The  Materialists,  you  will  remember, 
assume  that  there  is  matter,  matter  in 
motion;  and  that  there  is  nothing  else. 
The  Sensation  philosophers  assume  that 
there  are  sensations,  and  that  there  is 
nothing  else.  And  why  do  they  make 
these  assumptions?  For  the  simple 


6o  Philosophy 

reason  that,  when  we  reflect  upon  our 
experience  of  the  world  and  life,  we  want 
to  know  what  it  all  comes  to,  what  it 
all  means,  what  is  the  good  of  it  all. 

It  is  clear  that,  when  we  ask  ourselves 
what  our  experience  means,  and  what  it 
all  comes  to,  we  do  not  know  what  it  all 
means,  or  what  it  all  comes  to.  And  it  is 
because  we  don't  know,  that  we  have  to 
make  suppositions  and  frame  hypotheses. 
And  when  we  have  framed  a  hypothesis, 
or  made  an  assumption,  we  have  to  see 
whether  it  does  what  it  is  intended  to  do, 
that  is  to  say,  whether  it  does  really  ex- 
plain our  experience,  and  show  us  what 
it  all  comes  to. 

The  assumption  or  supposition  which 
the  Materialist  makes  is  that  matter, 
matter  in  motion,  alone  exists.  And  it  is 
clear  that  that  supposition  will  not 
explain  all  our  experience,  because  we 
certainly  have  experience  of  our  own 
thoughts  and  feelings,  and  they  certainly 
are  not  material  things;  they  cannot  be 
weighed  in  a  pair  of  scales  or  measured  by 


Materialism  and  Idealism       61 

a  foot-rule.  So  the  supposition  of  the 
Materialist,  that  matter  alone  exists,  will 
not  explain  all  our  experience.  Even  if 
matter  exists  and  is  real,  our  own  thoughts 
and  feelings  and  sensations  and  ideas 
are  real  also. 

Accordingly,  other  philosophers,  the 
Sensationalists  or  Idealists,  put  forward 
another  supposition  or  assumption.  They 
say,  let  us  suppose  that  sensations  or  ideas 
exist;  and — what  is  more — they  say,  let 
us  suppose  that  sensations  or  ideas  alone 
exist — that  there  are  no  material  things, 
or  matter.  The  question  then  is  whether 
these  suppositions,  which  the  Sensational- 
ist invites  us  to  make,  will  explain  our 
experience  and  enable  us  to  understand 
what  it  all  comes  to.  For  if  they  will  not, 
we  shall  have  to  abandon  them  and  seek 
for  some  other  supposition  which  will 
explain  our  experience  as  a  whole  and 
show  us  what  it  all  comes  to. 

Now,  every  curve  has  both  an  inside 
and  an  outside;  and  neither  can  exist 
without  the  other.  You  can  look  at  the 


62  Philosophy 

one  side  and  forget  the  other;  but  it  is 
there  all  the  same.  And  so,  too,  in 
experience,  there  is  the  person  who  has 
the  experience,  and  there  is  the  experience 
which  he  has.  You  may  look  at  the  one 
and  forget  the  other;  but  it  is  there 
all  the  same.  And  Materialism  looks 
at  the  one  side  of  the  curve,  and  sees 
the  world  of  material  things — and  seeing 
them,  it  forgets  the  other  side  of  the  curve 
altogether.  The  supposition  which  it 
makes  is  that  material  things,  on  the 
outside  of  the  curve,  alone  exist  and  are 
real.  Its  supposition,  therefore,  leaves 
out  of  account  one  half  of  our  experience 
— the  half  that  lies  on  the  inside  of  the 
curve.  Its  supposition,  therefore,  offers 
no  explanation  of  one  side  of  our  experi- 
ence. It  cannot,  therefore,  be  accepted 
as  a  satisfactory  explanation  of  the  whole. 
The  Sensationalist  philosopher  looks 
at  the  other  side,  the  inside,  of  the  curve, 
and  sees  the  inner  world  of  our  thoughts 
and  feelings  and  sensations  and  ideas 
— and,  seeing  them,  the  Sensationalist  or 


Materialism  and  Idealism       63 

Idealist  forgets  the  other  side  of  the  curve 
altogether.  The  Sensationalist,  like  the 
Materialist,  makes  a  supposition;  but 
whereas  the  Materialist  says,  let  us 
suppose  that  the  material  things,  on  the 
outside  of  the  curve,  alone  exist  and  are 
real,  the  Sensationalist  says,  let  us  sup- 
pose that  the  sensations  and  ideas,  on  the 
inside  of  the  curve,  alone  exist  and  are 
real.  So  the  Sensationalist  leaves  out  of 
account  one  half  of  our  experience — the 
half  that  lies  on  the  outside  of  the  curve. 
The  supposition,  therefore,  that  the  Sen- 
sationalist invites  us  to  make,  offers  no 
explanation  of  one  side  of  our  experience 
— our  experience  of  the  external  world. 
It  cannot,  therefore,  be  accepted  as  a 
satisfactory  explanation  of  the  whole  of 
our  experience. 

But  if  the  supposition  or  assumption 
which  the  Sensationalist  invites  us  to 
make  cannot  possibly  be  a  satisfactory 
explanation  of  the  whole  of  our  experience, 
it  must  be  a  false  assumption.  We  must 
look  into  that  point  in  the  next  chapter. 


64  Philosophy 

There  can  be  no  experience,  except 
where  there  is  some  one  who  experiences 
something.  The  some  one  and  the  some- 
thing are,  as  it  were,  the  two  sides  of 
a  curve.  Materialist  philosophers  hold 
that  the  outside  of  the  curve,  the  external 
world  of  matter  and  material,  moving 
things,  the  objects  of  which  we  have 
experience,  alone  are  real.  The  material 
things  which  we  see  and  touch  are,  on  this 
assumption,  the  only  realities,  and  they 
move  and  behave  in  accordance  with  the 
Laws  of  the  Uniformity  of  Nature  and  of 
Universal  Causation.  The  theory  of 
Evolution  can  be  set  forth  in  accordance 
with  these  laws  and  with  the  assumption 
that  material  things  alone  are  real.  The 
philosophy  of  Materialism,  however — that 
is,  the  assumption  that  matter  in  motion 
is  all  that  we  have  experience  of,  affords 
no  answer  to  the  question,  What  does 
our  experience  mean — what  is  the  good  of 
it  all?  And  it  accounts  only  for  one  side 
of  our  experience — the  outside  of  the 
curve,  the  world  of  material  objects; 


Materialism  and  Idealism       65 

and  it  leaves,  unexplained  and  unaccount- 
ed for,  the  inside  of  the  curve,  the  thought 
and  sensations  of  the  subject.  It  makes 
what  you  at  any  rate  must  consider  one 
great  omission;  for  you  may  truly  say, 
"It  leaves  out  me!" 

We  turn,  then,  to  the  philosophers  who 
hold  that  the  inside  of  the  curve,  our 
sensations  and  ideas,  alone  is  real. 
They  are  the  Sensation  philosophers  or 
Idealists.  For  the  existence  of  matter 
we  have  the  evidence  of  the  senses — that 
is  to  say,  sensations.  But  the  sensations 
we  have  are  all  in  us,  not  in  the  things: 
What  then  is  "matter"?  It  is  not  any 
sensation  you  have,  but  something  dif- 
ferent from  any  sensation — that  is  to  say, 
something  totally  unlike  what  you  see  or 
feel  or  smell  or  taste  or  hear.  Then, 
if  you  suppose  matter  not  to  be  what 
you  see  or  feel  or  taste  or  hear,  would 
you  or  anybody  miss  anything,  if  you 
supposed  it  did  not  exist?  If  you  have 
the  sensations  of  seeing,  feeling,  tasting, 
eating,  and  digesting  a  meal  and  feeling 


66  Philosophy 

refreshed  after  it,  why  should  you  say  that 
in  addition  to  all  the  sensations  there 
was  a  mysterious  something  else  called 
"matter" — and  why  should  you  make 
this  statement,  when  you  cannot  prove  it? 
To  return  to  the  simile  of  the  curve: 
every  curve  has  an  inside  and  an  outside. 
The  Materialist  says,  let  us  suppose 
that  what  is  on  the  outside  of  the  curve, 
viz.,  matter  in  motion,  alone  exists;  and 
then  it  follows  that  the  curve  has  no 
inside.  The  Sensationalist  says,  let  us 
suppose  that  what  is  on  the  inside  of  the 
curve,  our  sensations  and  ideas,  alone 
is  real;  and  then  it  follows  that  the  curve 
has  no  outside.  But  the  object  of  philo- 
sophy is  to  find  out  some  supposition 
which,  if  made,  will  explain  the  whole  of 
experience,  both  the  inside  and  the  out- 
side of  the  curve.  And  if  the  Sensa- 
tionalist hypothesis  fails  to  explain  the 
outside,  it  cannot  be  a  satisfactory  hypo- 
thesis. But  why  it  is  thus  unsatisfactory 
remains  to  be  inquired. 


CHAPTER  III 

SCEPTICISM    IN    PHILOSOPHY 

THE  questions  in  which  philosophy  has  its 
rise  are  whether  our  experience,  when  we 
come  to  reflect  upon  it  as  a  whole,  has 
any  meaning,  and  if  so,  what.  The  only 
way  in  which  philosophy  can  answer  those 
questions  is  to  make  some  supposition  or 
assumption  about  experience;  and  then 
see  whether  that  supposition  enables  us  to 
understand  experience  as  a  whole  and 
to  understand  what  is  the  good  of  it 
all. 

Now,  when  we  speak  of  experience,  we 
imply  not  only  that  there  is  experience 
but  also  that  somebody  has  it.  The 
person  who  has  the  experience  and  the 
experience  which  he  has  are,  as  it  were, 
the  two  sides  of  a  line ;  we  may,  if  we  will, 

distinguish   them,   and   as  a  matter  of 
67 


68  Philosophy 

fact  we  do.  We  cannot  confuse  them  or 
mistake  one  for  the  other.  But  we 
cannot  separate  them.  We  cannot  take 
one  side  of  the  line  away  from  the  other. 
The  two  sides  cannot  exist  apart.  We 
can  attend  to  one  side;  and,  whilst  we 
are  doing  so,  we  can  forget  about  the 
other.  When  we  do  so  attend  to  one 
side  and  forget  about  the  other,  we  are 
said  to  be  dealing  with  an  abstraction. 
And  it  is,  as  has  been  said  already,  with 
such  abstractions  that  all  science  deals. 
Physical  science  deals  with  abstractions 
on  one  side  of  the  line — with  such  ab- 
stractions as  weight,  or  light,  or  heat, 
or  motion,  or  matter.  Psychology,  or 
the  science  of  the  mind,  deals  with 
abstractions  on  the  other  side  of  the  line — 
with  such  abstractions  as  sensations,  feel- 
ings, will.  And  when  the  question  arises, 
what  is  the  meaning  of  our  experience? 
what  does  it  all  come  to?  some  philo- 
sophers look  out  from  one  side  of  the  line 
and  say  that  they  can  see  nothing  but 
matter  in  motion;  while  others  look  out 


Scepticism  in  Philosophy       69 

from  the  other  side  of  the  line  and  say 
they  can  see  nothing  but  sensations. 

The  supposition  which  the  Materialist 
philosophers  make  is :  Let  us  suppose  that 
matter  in  motion  alone  exists.  But  that 
supposition  obviously  will  not  explain  all 
our  experience,  for  our  thoughts  and 
ideas  and  sensations  certainly  exist,  and 
certainly  are  not  material  things.  The 
supposition  which  the  Sensationalist 
philosophers  make  is:  Let  us  suppose 
that  sensations  exist  and  that  sensa- 
tions alone  exist.  But  that  supposition 
obviously  will  not  explain  all  our  experi- 
ence, for  the  world  of  things  around  us 
certainly  exists. 

Then,  if  the  Sensation  philosopher  is 
wrong  in  saying  that  our  sensations  alone 
exist,  and  that  the  world  of  objects  around 
us  has  no  existence  and  no  reality,  are  we 
sure  that  he  is  right  even  in  saying  that 
there  are  such  things  as  sensations? 
That  is  an  important  question,  because  if 
there  are  such  things  as  sensations  some 
very  remarkable  consequences  follow. 


70  Philosophy 

Now,  it  may  seem  at  first  very  absurd 
to  ask  whether  there  are  such  things  as 
sensations,  because,  of  course,  everybody 
knows  that  we  have  sensations  of  sight 
and  touch  and  taste  and  hearing.  But 
the  Sensation  philosopher  says  not  only 
that  there  are  sensations,  but  that  sen- 
sations alone  exist,  and  that  they  can 
and  do  exist  by  themselves.  And  that, 
when  you  come  to  think  of  it,  is  just  as 
absurd  as  saying  not  only  that  some 
things  have  weight,  but  that  weight  can 
exist  and  does  exist  all  by  itself.  Some 
knives  are  sharp;  but  it  would  be  absurd 
to  say  that  sharpness  exists,  all  by  itself, 
and  that  knives  do  not — that  there  are  no 
knives.  And  so,  too,  it  is  absurd  to  say 
that  because  we  have  sensations,  there- 
fore sensations  can  exist  and  do  exist 
all  by  themselves.  Sensations  by  them- 
selves are,  of  course,  abstractions,  not 
realities,  just  as  sharpness  is  an  abstrac- 
tion and  not  something  which  you  find 
going  about  all  by  itself. 

But  that  is  just  the  supposition  which 


Scepticism  in  Philosophy       71 

the  Sensation  philosophers  make,  and 
which  they  ask  you  to  believe — that 
sensations  can  and  do  exist  all  by  them- 
selves. They  say,  let  us  suppose  that 
there  are  sensations,  separate  sensations, 
all  by  themselves,  and  then  we  shall  be 
able  to  explain  experience  as  a  whole 
and  to  show  what  is  the  good  of  it  all. 
Well,  it  does  not  seem  to  us  in  the  least 
likely  that  by  starting  from  sensations  by 
themselves,  which  are  abstractions,  not 
realities,  that  we  shall  ever  get  reality 
out  of  them:  sensations  by  themselves  do 
not  exist,  they  are  nought ;  and  by  adding 
nought  to  nought,  all  we  shall  get  in  the 
end  is  nought.  However,  the  Sensation 
philosopher  says  that  if  with  him  we 
suppose  the  ultimate  facts  of  our  experi- 
ence to  be  loose  and  separate  sensations, 
we  shall  be  able  to  explain  experience  as 
a  whole.  So  let  us  try  to  suppose  it. 

Of  course,  if  the  Sensationalist  is  right 
in  saying  not  only  that  sensations  exist, 
but  that  sensations  alone  exist,  it  natu- 
rally follows  that  matter  and  material 


72  Philosophy 

things  do  not  exist.  We  will  concede 
that  to  him  right  off.  When  we  have 
the  orange  in  our  hands,  we  have  cer- 
tain sensations  of  touch  and  resistance, 
of  sight  and  colour  and  smell,  and  we  may 
have  certain  sensations  of  taste.  And  if 
anybody  asks  us  what  else  there  is  in  the 
orange,  and  what  we  mean  by  saying  that 
the  orange  is  a  material  thing,  or  made 
of  matter,  we  will  reply  that  that  is  a 
difficult  question.  We  will  look  the  diffi- 
culty boldly  in  the  face — and  pass  on.  If, 
indeed,  sensations  alone  exist,  then,  of 
course,  matter  and  material  things  do 
not.  That  naturally  follows  from  the 
supposition  which  the  Sensation  philo- 
sopher makes :  his  supposition  is  that  the 
world  of  material  things,  on  the  outside 
of  the  curve,  is  not  real  and  does  not 
exist. 

The  one  thing,  and  the  only  thing  of 
which  I  can  be  certain,  if  the  Sensation 
philosopher  is  right  in  his  supposition,  is 
that  I  have  sensations  and  that  my  sen- 
sations exist.  If  I  see  an  orange,  I  am 


Scepticism  in  Philosophy       73 

certain  that  I  have  a  sensation  of  sight. 
If  I  feel  it,  I  am  certain  I  have  a  sensa- 
tion of  touch.  If  I  eat  it,  I  am  certain 
I  have  a  sensation  of  taste.  But  if  I 
go  further  and  say  that  in  addition  to 
my  sensations  of  sight,  touch,  taste, 
and  so  on,  there  is  something  else — 
that  there  is  a  real  orange,  then,  accord- 
ing to  the  Sensation  philosopher,  I  am 
talking  nonsense,  and  saying  I  know  not 
what. 

The  real  orange,  according  to  the  Sen- 
sationalist, is  simply  my  sensations  and 
nothing  else.  Very  good!  but,  if  this  is 
true,  let  us  see  what  follows.  Suppose  I 
am  talking  with  somebody,  say  with  you. 
What  do  I  know  of  you?  I  see  you,  that 
is  to  say  I  have  certain  sensations  of  sight, 
as  I  look  at  you.  I  hear  you  speak,  that  is 
to  say  I  have  certain  sensations  of  sound, 
as  I  listen  to  you.  I  shake  hands  with 
you,  that  is  to  say  I  have  certain  sen- 
sations of  touch,  as  I  feel  the  grasp  of  your 
hand.  And  then,  according  to  the  Sen- 
sation philosopher,  I  go  further  and  say 


74  Philosophy 

to  myself  that  in  addition  to  the  sen- 
sations of  sight  and  hearing  and  touch 
that  I  have,  there  is  something  else — that 
there  is  a  real  person  before  me,  and  that 
you  really  exist. 

But,  according  to  the  Sensation  philo- 
sopher, if  I  say  that,  I  must  be  talking 
nonsense,  just  as,  according  to  him,  I  was 
talking  nonsense  when  I  said  before  that 
I  was  eating  a  real  orange.  The  truth, 
according  to  him,  was  that  then  I  was 
not  eating  a  real  orange  but  that  I  was 
having  certain  sensations.  And  the  truth, 
according  to  him,  is  that  now  I  am  not 
talking  to  a  real  person  but  that  I  am 
having  certain  sensations.  If  in  the  one 
case  I  was  not  eating  a  real  orange,  but 
only  having  certain  sensations,  so  in  the 
other  case  I  am  only  having  certain  sen- 
sations and  not  talking  to  a  real  person. 
Just  as,  according  to  him,  there  is  no  real 
orange  but  only  certain  sensations  that 
I  have,  so  there  are  no  real  persons 
besides  myself,  but  only  certain  sen- 
sations that  I  have. 


Scepticism  in  Philosophy       75 

Thus,  if  we  agree  to  the  supposition 
which  the  Sensation  philosopher  makes, 
it  not  only  follows  that  there  are  no 
things  beyond  my  sensations,  but  that 
there  are  no  persons  either.  I  am  the 
only  person  who  exists.  That  may  be  a 
conclusion  very  satisfactory  to  me.  But 
how  do  you  like  it? 

Of  course,  when  the  Sensationalist 
concludes  that  the  table  or  the  chair 
does  not  exist,  the  table  or  the  chair  can- 
not object,  because  the  table  and  the 
chair  are  not  alive  and  are  not  conscious 
of  their  own  existence.  But  you  are. 
And  you  may  object  to  being  told  that 
you  are  only  certain  sensations  that  I 
have,  and  that  you  have  no  real  existence. 
Perhaps  you  will  say  to  the  Sensation 
philosopher  that  you  are  not  like  the 
table  or  the  chair;  that  you  do  exist;  and 
that  you  are  as  real  as  he  is.  And 
doubtless  the  Sensationalist  will  feel  that 
there  is  something  in  that;  he  will  have 
to  admit  that  you  are  as  real  as  he  is. 
And  you  may  think  that  that  settles  the 


76  Philosophy 

question.  But  it  does  not.  And  that 
brings  us  to  the  next  consequence  which 
follows  from  the  supposition  that  the 
Sensationalist  makes. 

The  Sensationalist  has  said,  as  we 
know,  Let  us  suppose  that  we  have  sen- 
sations. And  you  saw  nothing  wrong 
with  that:  of  course,  we  have  sensations. 
Very  well!  then,  he  said,  if  we  have 
sensations,  there  is  no  need  to  suppose 
that  there  is  anything  else.  If  we  have 
the  sensations  of  seeing,  touching,  and 
tasting  an  orange,  and  always  can  have 
them  or  get  them  when  we  want  them, 
what  on  earth  is  the  need  of  supposing 
that  over  and  above  them  there  is  some- 
thing else  —  a  real,  material  orange? 
There  is  no  need,  he  said.  And  if  I  have 
the  sensations  of  seeing  and  hearing  and 
touching  other  people,  what  is  the  need 
of  supposing  that  over  and  above  or 
behind  the  sensations  there  is  any  per- 
son? There  is  no  need,  he  said,  to  sup- 
pose that  there  is  anybody  in  existence, 
or  anything  in  existence,  but  myself 


Scepticism  in  Philosophy       77 

and  my  own  sensations.  But,  you  said, 
I  am  as  real  as  you  are,  my  sensations 
are  as  good  as  yours.  And,  as  we  saw, 
the  Sensationalist  has  to  admit  that. 
And  you  thought  that  settled  the 
question. 

But  it  does  not  settle  the  question. 
That  is  just  where  a  difference  of  opinion 
comes  in.  And  the  difference  is  this. 
You  tell  the  Sensationalist  that  you  are  as 
real  as  he  is;  and  you  mean  that  you  are 
both  real  persons.  He  will  admit,  he 
cannot  deny,  that  you  are  as  real  as  he  is. 
But,  then,  he  does  not  believe  that  you 
are  real.  And  accordingly  he  must  admit 
that  if  you  are  not  a  real  person,  neither 
is  he  himself.  And  he  not  only  admits  it, 
he  maintains  it. 

The  Sensationalist  says,  you  believe,  or 
think  you  believe,  in  the  existence  and  the 
reality  of  yourself;  but  what  do  you  mean 
by  yourself?  Let  us  clear  up  our  notions, 
the  Sensationalist  will  say,  and  see  what 
is  really  the  meaning  of  the  words  we  use, 
and  we  shall  find  out  that  there  is  no 


78  Philosophy 

more  meaning  in  the  word  "self"  than 
there  is  in  the  word  "matter." 

We  have  seen  that,  if  we  suppose  we 
have  sensations,  there  is  no  need  to 
suppose  that  there  really  are  material 
things:  if  we  have  the  sensation  of  seeing 
an  orange  and  feeling  it  and  smelling  it 
and  tasting  it,  there  is  no  need  to  suppose 
that  there  really  is  anything  more  than 
the  sensations  we  have  had  of  it,  or  may 
have  of  it.  Indeed,  if  we  come  to  think 
of  it,  "matter"  is  a  word  which  has  no 
meaning  in  it ;  for  what  is  supposed  to  be 
meant  by  it? 

Something  purely  negative.  Matter  is 
not  what  we  see — it  is  not  the  sensation  of 
sight.  It  is  not  the  sensation  of  touch,  or 
the  sensation  of  smell  or  taste  or  of  sound. 
It  is  not  any  sensation  or  perception  that 
we  have.  The  truth  is,  the  Sensationalist 
says,  matter  is  not  anything  whatever  at 
all.  Take  away  from  a  thing  everything 
we  know  of  it,  every  sensation  or  percep- 
tion that  we  have  of  it — and  what  there  is 
left,  he  says,  is  nothing — that  is  "matter. " 


Scepticism  in  Philosophy       79 

Well,  he  goes  on  to  say,  if  you  apply  the 
same  course  of  reasoning  to  the  self,  you 
will  find  that  you  are  driven  to  the  same 
conclusion. 

Just  as  in  all  your  sensations  or  per- 
ceptions of  sight,  touch,  sound,  taste, 
smell,  you  never  come  across  anything 
but  the  sensations  or  perceptions  and 
never  find  any  "matter,"  so  too  in  all 
your  sensations  or  perceptions  of  sight, 
touch,  sound,  taste,  or  smell,  you  never 
come  across  anything  but  the  sensations 
or  perceptions — you  never  come  across 
any ' '  self. ' '  Like  the  word  ' '  matter, ' '  the 
term ' '  self ' '  is  merely  a  word  which  we  use. 

The  Sensationalist  philosopher,  Hume, 
states  this  quite  clearly  and  plainly.  He 
says:1  "When  I  enter  most  intimately 

x"  There  are  some  philosophers  who  imagine  we  are 
every  moment  intimately  conscious  of  what  we  call  our 
SELF;  that  we  feel  its  existence  and  its  continuance  in 
existence,  and  are  certain,  beyond  the  evidence  of  a 
demonstration,  both  of  its  perfect  identity  and  simplicity. 
....  Unluckily  all  these  positive  assertions  are  contrary 
to  that  very  experience  which  is  pleaded  for  them,  nor 
have  we  any  idea  of  Self,  after  the  manner  it  is  here  ex- 
plained. .  .  .  For  my  part,  when,"  etc. 


8o  Philosophy 

into  what  I  call  myself,  I  always  stumble 
on  some  particular  perception  or  other, 
of  heat  or  cold,  light  or  shade,  love  or 
hatred,  pain  or  pleasure.  I  never  can 
catch  myself  at  any  time  without  a  per- 
ception, and  never  can  observe  anything 
but  the  perception.  ...  If  any  one, 
thinks  he  has  a  different  notion  of  himself, 
upon  serious  and  unprejudiced  reflection, 
I  must  confess  I  can  no  longer  reason  with 
him.  .  .  .  He  may  perhaps  perceive 
something  simple  and  continued  which  he 
calls  himself;  though  I  am  certain  there  is 
no  such  principle  in  me.  But  setting 
aside  some  metaphysicians  of  this  kind, 
I  may  venture  to  affirm  of  the  rest  of 
mankind  that  they  are  nothing  but  a 
bundle  or  collection  of  different  per- 
ceptions." 

Self,  then,  according  to  Hume  and  the 
Sensationalists,  is  a  mere  word:  it  stands 
for  "nothing  but  a  bundle  or  collection  of 
different  perceptions"  or  sensations.  In 
reality,  according  to  the  Sensationalists, 
there  exists  nothing  but  perceptions  or 


Scepticism  in  Philosophy       81 

sensations;  and  though  people  will  believe 
that  they  themselves  exist,  and  that 
things  or  matter  exist,  the  truth,  accord- 
ing to  Hume,  is  that  matter  and  self 
are  mere  words  and  nothing  more,  or, 
at  any  rate,  if  they  are  anything  more, 
we  do  not  know  and  cannot  possibly  know 
what  they  are. 

The  object  of  philosophy  is,  let  us 
remember,  to  discover  whether  our  ex- 
perience of  the  world  and  life  has  any 
meaning;  and,  if  so,  what.  For  this 
purpose,  philosophers  make  supposi- 
tions or  assumptions.  The  Sensation 
philosophers  say,  Let  us  suppose  that 
sensations  exist,  and  we  will  explain  the 
meaning  of  experience  and  what  good  it 
all  is.  We,  therefore,  have  listened  to 
their  supposition — and  what  is  the  result 
of  it  all?  The  result  is  that  if  we  suppose 
that  there  are  such  things  as  sensations — 
abstract  sensations,  all  by  themselves — 
then  there  are  no  persons  and  no  matter, 
or,  at  any  rate,  we  cannot  possibly  know 
whether  there  are  or  what  they  are. 


82  Philosophy 

Now,  that  conclusion  is  philosophical 
scepticism;  it  is  that  everybody  believes 
that  there  are  persons  or  things,  but 
nobody  can  possibly  know  whether  there 
are  or  what  they  are.  And  that  con- 
clusion is  the  logical  result  of  the  supposi- 
tion which  the  Sensationalist  invited  us  to 
make,  viz.,  that  there  are  such  things  as 
sensations,  loose  and  separate  sensations, 
all  by  themselves.  We  were  invited  to 
make  that  supposition  on  the  ground 
that,  if  only  we  would  admit  it,  then  it 
would  be  possible  to  explain  the  meaning 
of  experience  and  what  good  it  all  is. 
And  now  we  find  that,  so  far  from  explain- 
ing our  experience,  this  supposition  leads 
us  to  the  conclusion  that  if  there  are  per- 
sons who  have  experience,  and  if  there  are 
things  of  which  they  have  experience, 
it  is  impossible  to  know  who  or  what  they 
are. 

The  truth,  of  course,  is  that  sensations 
exist — but  not  all  by  themselves,  loose 
and  separate.  There  is  no  such  thing  as 
a  toothache,  loose  and  separate,  all  by 


Scepticism  in  Philosophy       83 

itself,  floating  about  in  space,  with  nobody 
to  feel  it.  If  nobody  has  the  tooth- 
ache, there  will  be  no  toothache  in  exist- 
ence. If  nobody  feels  anything,  there 
will  be  no  sensation  at  all.  So,  too,  if 
there  are  no  things  to  have  experience  of, 
nobody  can  have  experience  of  them, 
and  there  will  be  no  experience  at  all. 
And  if  there  is  nobody  to  have  any  sen- 
sations, nobody  to  have  any  experience, 
there  will  be  no  experience  and  no  sen- 
sations at  all. 

But  the  point  we  have  started  from  all 
along  is  that  there  is  experience,  and  that 
what  philosophy  has  to  do  is  to  inquire 
whether  experience  has  any  meaning — 
what  it  all  comes  to — and  what  is  the 
good  of  it  all.  Plainly,  then,  if  there  is 
experience  there  must  be  some  one  who 
has  the  experience — the  subject  of  experi- 
ence— and  there  must  be  something  which 
he  experiences — the  object  of  experience. 
They  are  the  two  sides  of  the  curve,  the 
inside  and  the  outside,  and  they  may  be 
distinguished,  but  they  cannot  possibly 


84  Philosophy 

be  separated.  Still  less  is  it  possible  to 
deny  the  existence  of  either  the  one  side 
or  the  other. 

Hume,  in  the  passage  already  quoted, 
does  deny  the  existence  of  the  one  side; 
he  denies  the  existence  of  the  self — he 
denies  the  existence  of  himself.  But 
how  could  he  deny  it,  if  he  did  not  exist, 
himself,  to  do  it?  He  says,  in  effect: 
When  I  enter  into  myself,  I  find  that 
there  is  no  self  and  that  I  do  not  exist. 
But  if  there  is  no  self,  how  can  he  enter 
into  it?  If  he  is  right  in  saying  that  I  do 
not  exist,  how  can  he  be  right  in  saying 
that  "I  enter  into  myself"  and  find  this 
sensation  or  that?  The  plain  truth  of 
the  matter — simple  enough  for  the  sim- 
plest of  us  to  see — is  that  no  man  can  say 
"I  do  not  exist"  without  contradicting 
himself,  for,  unless  he  existed,  he  could 
not  say  it.  And  if,  when  he  says,  "I 
do  not  exist,"  he  contradicts  himself, 
then  he  is  wrong  in  saying  so,  and  he  does 
exist. 

But  what  if,  when  he  is  talking  to  you, 


Scepticism  in  Philosophy       85 

and  arguing  with  you,  he  says  that  you, 
at  any  rate,  don't  exist?  Well,  then  he  is 
contradicting  himself  again,  for  he  says: 
"I  am  arguing  with  you.  I  know  very 
well  what  you  mean  when  you  say  that 
you  exist.  And  I  tell  you  that  you 
don't."  Now,  if  you  didn't  exist,  he 
could  not  tell  you  that,  or  anything  else. 
But  he  is  telling  you.  So  he  is  just  con- 
tradicting himself  once  more,  when  he  is 
trying  to  make  you  believe  that  you  don't 
exist.  If  you  did  not  exist,  he  could  not 
convince  you.  And  if  he  does  convince 
you  that  you  don't  exist,  he  must  be 
wrong,  because  he  could  not  convince  you, 
unless  you  were  there  to  be  convinced. 
So  anyway  he  is  wrong  in  saying  that  that 
side  of  the  curve — the  side  which  is  you 
or  me,  the  side  which  is  the  subject  of 
experience,  does  not  exist. 

And  he  is  just  as  wrong  in  saying  that 
the  other  side  of  the  curve,  on  which  lie 
the  things  we  experience,  the  objects  of 
experience,  does  not  exist.  Just  consider 
what  Hume  says.  He  says :  Let  us  suppose 


86  Philosophy 

that  there  are  no  things  or  objects ;  let  us 
suppose  that  there  are  only  loose  and 
separate  sensations.  For  instance,  let  us 
suppose  that  there  is  no  real  orange,  but 
that  we  have  only  loose  and  separate 
sensations  of  colour,  shape,  touch,  and 
taste,  and  smell.  Of  course,  you  will 
agree  that  if,  indeed,  there  is  no  real 
orange,  then  there  can  only  be  the  sen- 
sations of  smell  and  taste  and  colour 
and  shape  and  touch. 

If,  however,  there  is  a  real  orange,  as 
you  and  I  believe,  like  everybody  else, 
then  the  various  qualities  it  has  of  colour 
and  shape  and  smell,  and  so  on,  belong  to 
it;  they  are  found  in  an  orange  and  no- 
where else — the  orange  is  the  only  thing 
in  which  precisely  those  qualities  are 
found.  But  if,  as  Hume  says,  there  is  no 
real  orange,  in  which  those  qualities  are  to 
be  found  combined,  then  the  qualities — 
or,  as  he  calls  them,  the  sensations — of 
colour,  smell,  taste,  and  so  on,  are  not 
combined,  but  are,  as  he  calls  them,  loose 
and  separate. 


Scepticism  in  Philosophy       87 

But  though  the  sensations  are,  accord- 
ing to  him,  loose  and  separate,  and  have 
no  connection  with  each  other  in  them- 
selves, still  he  admits  that  when  we  have 
one  of  the  sensations,  we  expect  the 
others — when  we  have  the  sensation  of 
seeing  a  lemon,  or  of  seeing  somebody  eat 
a  lemon,  our  mouths  water,  or  at  least 
we  have  that  sensation — we  can  almost 
taste  the  sourness  of  the  lemon. 

So,  then,  this  is  how  things  stand :  Hume 
says:  Let  us  suppose  that  sensations 
are  loose  and  separate,  and  that,  when  we 
see  a  fire — that  is,  when  we  have  a  certain 
sensation  of  sight,  there  is  no  real  reason 
why  we  should,  when  we  go  up  to  the  fire, 
have  a  certain  other  sensation,  viz.,  a  feel- 
ing of  warmth.  Then,  we  say  to  Hume, 
if  there  is  no  real  reason  why  the  two 
sensations  should  be  connected  together, 
why  ever  do  we  expect  the  one  sensation 
when  we  have  the  other — when  we  see 
fire,  why  do  we  expect  warmth?  Surely, 
we  say,  the  reason  why  we  expect  them 
together  is  that  they  are  really  connected 


88  Philosophy 

together.  No!  says  Hume,  the  two  sen- 
sations are  quite  loose  and  separate: 
they  have  no  connection  together  what- 
ever; all  that  happens  is  that  you  have 
got  into  the  habit  of  thinking  that  they  go 
together,  but  that  is  merely  a  habit 
and  nothing  else. 

You  have  got  into  the  habit,  Hume 
says,  of  expecting  the  one  when  you  see 
the  other,  but  the  habit  and  the  expec- 
tation are  in  you  and  in  your  mind,  not 
in  them:  the  connection  is  in  your  thought, 
there  is  no  connection  in  them ;  they,  as  he 
has  always  said,  are  loose  and  separate. 
That  is  what  Hume  has  said  all  along: 
Let  us  suppose  that  sensations  are  loose 
and  separate  and  not  connected  together. 
And  when  you  say:  "But  they  are  not 
loose  and  separate ;  whenever  I  see  a  fire 
I  find  it  hot";  he  says,  "Oh!  that  is  only 
a  habit  you  have  got  into." 

Now,  the  fact  is  that  Hume  has  begged 
the  question  all  along.  The  question  is 
whether  there  is  a  fire;  and  Hume  has  said 
in  effect,  though  perhaps  you  did  not 


Scepticism  in  Philosophy       89 

notice  it,  Let  us  suppose  that  there  is  no 
fire;  let  us  suppose  that  there  are  only 
sensations — the  sensations  of  seeing  a 
blaze  and  feeling  it  warm — then  I  shall 
be  able  to  convince  you  that  there  is  no 
fire.  And,  naturally,  if  you  admit  to 
begin  with  that  there  is  no  fire,  you  will 
have  to  admit  to  the  end  that  there  is  no 
fire.  But  the  idea  that  there  is  really 
no  fire  was,  at  the  beginning,  only  a  sup- 
position which  Hume  invited  you  to 
make.  And  he  asked  you  to  make  it,  on 
the  ground  that  then  he  could  do  what  it 
is  the  business  of  a  philosopher  to  do,  viz., 
explain  our  experience,  and  tell  us  what 
it  all  means.  And  if  he  had  done  so, 
then  we  should  have  had  to  think  that 
after  all,  unlikely  as  it  seemed  that  there 
was  no  real  fire,  there  might  be  some- 
thing in  the  supposition. 

But,  what  has  been  the  result  of  mak- 
ing the  supposition  that  there  is  no  real 
fire  and  that  there  are  no  real  objects  of 
any  kind? 

The  result  has  been  a  perfectly  natural 


9O  Philosophy 

and  logical  result  and  exactly  what  we 
might  have  expected.  If  we  begin  by 
supposing  that  there  are  really  only  loose 
and  separate  sensations  in  the  world, 
we  must  end  by  believing  that  loose  and 
separate  sensations  alone  exist,  and  that 
there  are  no  real  things  or  objects,  such  as 
a  fire,  and  no  real  persons;  and  that 
no  rational  man  can  believe  that  there  are 
any  real  things  or  any  real  persons.  And, 
plainly,  any  rational  man  who  begins 
by  assuming  that  there  are  no  real  things 
— that  fire,  for  instance,  does  not  exist — 
must,  if  he  is  consistent  and  logical, 
maintain  up  to  the  end,  that  there  are 
no  real  things — that  the  external  world, 
the  world  of  things  on  the  outside  of  the 
curve,  has  no  existence. 

But  no  rational  man,  when  he  comes 
to  see  what  are  the  consequences  of 
assuming  that  loose  and  separate  sen- 
sations alone  exist,  will  agree  to  the 
assumption.  The  rational  man  wants 
some  assumption  that  will  explain  experi- 
ence; and  if  such  an  assumption  as  that 


Scepticism  in  Philosophy       91 

which  Hume  and  the  Sensationalists  make 
results  in  the  conclusion  that  experience 
has  no  meaning  at  all,  the  rational  man 
will  set  aside  that  assumption  and  seek 
some  other. 

Now,  can  we  learn  anything  from 
Hume  and  the  Sensation  philosophers? 
Yes,  we  can.  We  learn  this,  that  if  we 
begin  by  denying  the  existence  of  the  out- 
side of  the  curve — that  is,  of  the  external 
world,  of  such  objects  as  fire,  for  instance, 
we  can  never  reach  an  explanation  of 
anything.  Very  good!  then,  if  we  want 
to  learn  what  our  experience  all  comes 
to,  what  is  the  meaning  and  the  good  of  it 
all,  we  must  begin  by  supposing  that  the 
outside  of  the  curve  is  real,  that  objects 
do  really  exist. 

And  what  of  the  inside  of  the  curve? 
Well,  as  I  hope  you  will  remember,  we 
saw  that  some  men  of  science  started  by 
assuming,  for  their  own  part,  that  the 
things  around  us,  the  things  on  which 
they  experimented,  were  real  and  were 
the  only  realities.  But,  of  course,  those 


92  Philosophy 

things  were  things  which  they  observed 
and  on  which  they  experimented.  Things 
which  nobody  can  observe  or  form  any 
opinion  about  are  things  which  physical 
science  declines  to  have  to  do  with. 
Science  deals  only  with  things  that  can 
be  presented  to  the  mind.  Mind  is 
essential  to  science:  science  can't  get 
on  without  it.  The  outside  of  the  curve 
— the  world  of  objects — is  essential  to 
science;  and  the  inside  of  the  curve — the 
mind  to  which  those  objects  are  presented 
— is  equally  essential  to  science. 

The  reason  of  that  is  of  the  very  sim- 
plest: neither  side  of  the  curve  can  exist 
without  the  other.  And  what  is  true  of 
science  is  equally  true  of  all  knowledge 
and  all  experience:  there  must  be  a  sub- 
ject who  knows,  and  objects  which  he 
knows.  And  neither  can  exist  without 
the  other.  We  can  abstract  the  one 
from  the  other;  and  whilst  we  are  examin- 
ing it,  we  can  forget  the  other.  But  the 
other  is  there  all  the  same. 

A  mind  without  anything  to  know, 


Scepticism  in  Philosophy       93 

would  not  be  a  mind:  if  it  were  conscious 
of  nothing  at  all,  it  would  not  be  a  con- 
sciousness, or  a  mind.  And  an  object 
which  nobody  whatever  knows  to  exist, 
is  one  of  which  nobody  can  say  whether 
it  exists  or  not.  Obviously  it  is  not  an 
object  of  knowledge,  for  nobody  even 
knows  whether  there  is  such  a  thing. 
And  if  nobody  knows  whether  there  is 
such  a  thing,  it  cannot  be  of  any  use  for 
explaining  things,  or  for  any  other  pur- 
pose. Consequently,  if  that  is  what  is 
meant  by  matter,  then  nobody  even 
knows  whether  there  is  such  a  thing  or 
not:  it  is  something  which  nobody  what- 
ever knows  to  exist,  and  of  which  nobody 
can  ever  possibly  say  whether  it  exists 
or  not.  If  there  were  such  a  thing  it 
would  be  of  no  use  to  us;  and  we  do  not 
know  whether  there  is  such  a  thing  or  not. 
If  anyone  were  to  tell  us  that  there  is 
something  such  that  no  mind  whatever 
could  know  it,  or  know  whether  it  existed 
or  not,  we  might  very  well  say  to  him, 
then  how,  pray,  do  you  know  that  there 


94  Philosophy 

is  such  a  thing?  And  of  course  he  could 
not  tell  us,  for  a  very  simple  reason:  he 
would  be  talking  nonsense.  Very  well! 
then,  if  we  are  going  to  use  the  term 
"matter,"  and  to  put  any  meaning  in  it, 
it  must  be  something  that  we  know — 
partially,  at  any  rate — and  not  some- 
thing that  we  can  never  know.  It  must 
be  an  object  of  knowledge,  and  some- 
thing that  we  can  find  out  about.  In 
that  sense  of  the  word,  as  something 
that  can  be  the  object  of  knowledge, 
it  stands  for  the  outside  of  our  curve. 
And  the  outside  of  a  curve  may  be  dis- 
tinguished from  the  inside,  but  it  never 
can  exist  apart  from  it. 

The  Sensationalist  undertakes  to  ex- 
plain experience,  if  we  will  trust  to  our 
five  senses  and  assume  that  sensations 
alone  exist.  From  this  assumption,  how- 
ever, it  follows  that,  when  I  am  talking 
with  you,  I  have  certain  sensations  of 
sight  and  sound,  and  so  on,  but  that 
those  sensations  alone  exist,  and  you  do 
not,  just  as  it  follows  on  the  Sensational- 


Scepticism  in  Philosophy       95 

ist  argument  that,  when  I  am  eating  an 
orange,  I  have  certain  sensations,  but 
that  no  real  orange  exists.  If  you  insist 
that  you  exist  just  as  much  as  the  Sen- 
sation philosopher  who  says  that  you 
don't,  if  you  maintain  that  there  is  as 
much  reality  in  yourself  as  in  himself, 
his  reply  is  that  he  sees  as  little  reason  to 
believe  in  the  existence  of  himself  as  of 
yourself:  "self"  is  merely  a  word  with 
nothing  to  correspond  to  it,  just  as 
"matter"  is.  There  is  no  reason,  he 
says,  to  believe  in  the  existence  of  either 
persons  or  things. 

Thus  the  Sensation  philosophy,  which 
begins  by  assuming  that  sensations  alone 
exist,  so  far  from  solving  the  problem  of 
philosophy  and  offering  some  explanation 
of  our  experience,  ends  up  in  philosophi- 
cal scepticism,  and  in  doubting  or  deny- 
ing that  either  persons  or  things  have 
any  existence  at  all. 

But  this  sceptical  conclusion  is  plainly 
self-contradictory,  for  it  requires  us  to 
say,  "I  know  I  don't  exist" — and  if  I 


96  Philosophy 

don't  exist,  I  can't  know  that  or  any- 
thing else,  whereas,  if  I  do  exist,  I  con- 
tradict myself  by  saying  that  I  don't. 

In  the  same  way  this  scepticism  re- 
quires us  to  say,  "I  know  things  do  not 
exist."  But  this  also  is  a  self-contra- 
diction, for  if  things  do  not  exist,  I  can 
know  nothing  about  them,  nothing  what- 
ever, not  even  so  much  as  whether  they 
do  exist  or  not.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
things  are  known  to  me,  if  anything  what- 
ever is  known  to  me,  then  I  am  contra- 
dicting myself  if  I  say  that  "I  know 
things  do  not  exist. " 

The  plain  and  simple  truth  is  that  both 
sides  of  the  curve  are  known  to  us,  even 
if  our  knowledge  does  not  go  very  far  in 
either  direction.  We  know  that  the  self 
or  subject  exists  and  that  things  or  objects 
are  known  to  it.  But  though  the  outside 
of  a  curve  may  be  distinguished  from  the 
inside,  it  can  never  exist  apart  from  it. 

Finally,  it  is  impossible  to  deny  the 
existence  of  either  side  of  the  curve,  with- 
out denying  the  existence  of  the  other 


Scepticism  in  Philosophy       97 

side.  You  may  deny  the  existence  of  the 
one  side,  and  not  see  at  first  that,  when 
you  do  so,  you  are  really  denying  the 
existence  of  the  other  side  also.  But, 
when  you  come  to  see  this,  you  must  do 
one  of  two  things:  you  must  either  say 
with  the  sceptic,  "Very  well,  then,  neither 
side  exists — neither  matter  nor  mind"; 
or,  if  that  seems  too  absurd,  then  you 
must  say  that  both  sides  exist — that 
you  who  know  something  exist,  and 
that  the  objects  which  you  know  also 
exist.  In  other  words,  you  must  give 
up  scepticism  and  fall  back  on  common 
sense. 


CHAPTER  IV 

PHILOSOPHY   IN    PRACTICE 

EVERY  form  of  philosophy — and  in  dif- 
ferent ages  philosophy  has  taken  many 
forms — is  built  upon  some  supposition 
and  is  the  working  out  of  some  assump- 
tion or  hypothesis.  And  the  supposition 
or  assumption  is  always  based  or  sup- 
posed to  be  based  upon  experience,  and  is 
applied  to  experience.  Even  philosophi- 
cal scepticism,  inasmuch  as  it  is  a  form 
of  philosophy,  is  an  assumption  made 
about  experience:  it  is  the  supposition 
that  experience  is  essentially  unintelli- 
gible. Scepticism  when  pushed  to  that 
extreme  is  obviously  untenable,  for  experi- 
ence is  certainly  not  altogether  unintelli- 
gible: we  can  and  do  work  it  in  practical 
life  with  a  considerable  amount  of  suc- 
cess. But  the  scepticism  which,  without 
98 


Philosophy  in  Practice          99 

going  to  this  extreme,  points  out  to  any 
form  of  philosophy  that  there  are  things 
which  that  philosophy  does  not  succeed  in 
explaining,  is  very  necessary  to  prevent 
the  philosophy  of  the  time  being  from 
falling  into  dogmatism.  The  use  and  the 
value  of  scepticism  is  that  it  reminds 
philosophy,  sometimes  very  sharply  and 
disagreeably,  that  no  form  of  philosophy 
is  final ;  and  that  any  form  of  it  is  useless 
and  simply  cumbers  the  ground  if  it  does 
not  live  and  grow. 

The  supposition  by  which  we  have 
tested  the  philosophy  of  Materialism  on 
the  one  hand,  and  Sensationalism  on  the 
other,  is  the  assumption  that  experience 
is  intelligible,  and  in  some  sense  a  whole, 
and  that  there  is  not  only  meaning  but 
also  good  in  it.  But  on  this  point  —  on 
the  question,  What  is  the  good  of  it  all? 
a  question  that  certainly  deserves  con- 
sidering— we  have  said  nothing  hitherto, 
because  we  have  been  examining  Sen- 
sationalism and  Materialism,  and  they 
profess  to  consider  only  what  is,  or  what 


ioo  Philosophy 

existence  is,  or  what  reality  is,  and  they 
do  not  go  on  to  ask  what  is  the  good  of 
matter  in  motion,  or  of  loose  and  separate 
sensations.  And  yet  it  is  clear  not  only 
that  we  find  in  our  experience  matter 
and  mind,  or  subjects  and  objects,  but 
that  we  also  find  action  and  will. 

Any  philosophy,  therefore,  which  pro- 
fesses to  offer  us  some  supposition 
which  will  explain  experience,  ought  cer- 
tainly to  try  not  only  to  explain  know- 
ledge and  existence,  but  also  to  explain 
action  and  will.  When  we  will  things 
and  do  them,  we  have  some  reason  for 
doing  so — we  have  some  end  in  view;  and, 
at  the  time,  we  consider  the  end  we  have 
in  view  to  be  good.  So  philosophy  ought 
to  consider  whether  there  is  really  any 
end,  and  any  good,  in  our  experience, 
and  if  so,  what  it  is.  And,  as  has  already 
been  said,  the  supposition  on  which 
we  have  been  going  is  that  there  is  some 
good  in  our  experience,  and  in  experience 
as  a  whole,  just  as  we  have  assumed  that 
there  is  some  meaning  in  it. 


Philosophy  in  Practice        101 

You  will  see,  therefore,  that  from  this 
point  of  view,  on  this  supposition  that  is 
to  say,  philosophy  is  intensely  practical. 
We  want  to  know  what  is  the  meaning 
of  experience — that  is  to  say,  to  what  end 
it  is  directed,  what  good  it  achieves  or 
attempts  to  achieve.  The  questions  we 
started  from  at  the  beginning  were, 
What  is  the  meaning  of  experience? 
What  does  it  all  come  to?  What  is  the 
good  of  it  all?  These  questions  are 
practical  questions;  and  the  attempt  to 
answer  them,  in  word  and  deed,  is  philo- 
sophy in  practice. 

Philosophy,  in  a  word,  is  practical.  It 
does  not  deal  with  abstractions,  as  science 
does — for  science  deals  with  such  ab- 
stractions as  weight  or  heat  or  light; 
and  it  deals  with  them  not  only  as  if  they 
existed  apart  from  things,  but  as  if  these 
abstractions  could  exist  without  being 
known  by  the  person  who  abstracts  them. 

Philosophy  again  does  not  deal  with 
such  abstractions  as  knowledge  and  ex- 
istence are,  if  they  are  taken  by  them- 


102  Philosophy 

selves.  Philosophy,  being  practical,  deals 
with  life  as  it  is  lived,  with  knowledge 
and  existence  as  they  are  manifested  and 
actually  experienced — that  is,  with  the 
very  life  of  experience  itself. 

The  object  of  philosophy  is  not  merely 
to  construct  a  system  of  truth :  to  do  that, 
it  would  have  to  consider  knowledge  and 
existence  as  things  apart  from  our  actual 
lives  as  we  actually  live  them;  and  if  it 
did  so  consider  them  as  something  apart, 
then  it  would  not  be  constructing  a 
system  of  truth,  for  it  would  be  leaving 
out  the  most  important  fact  of  all — 
that  is,  our  life  as  we  actually  live  it. 
Such  truth  as  philosophy  would  attain,  if 
it  confined  its  attention  to  knowledge  and 
existence,  would  be  partial,  incomplete, 
and  abstract  truth.  Or,  rather,  since 
philosophy  does  sometimes  confine  its 
attention  to  knowledge  (epistemology) 
and  existence  (ontology),  such  truth  as  it 
does  then  attain  is  partial,  incomplete, 
and  abstract.  And  so  it  is  like  such 
truth  as  is  attained  by  science,  but  with 


Philosophy  in  Practice        103 

this  difference,  that  science  deals  only 
with  material  existence,  or  with  matter 
alone,  and  consequently  the  truth  which 
science  attains  is  even  more  partial  and 
more  abstract. 

The  living  truth  is  truth  which  is 
carried  into  action.  I  tender  you  a  coin, 
and  ask  whether  it  is  a  sovereign.  You 
look  at  it  and  say  that  it  is.  Now,  if  you 
will  give  me  twenty  shillings  for  it,  what 
you  say  is  a  living  truth:  it  is  readiness 
to  act  and  results,  if  necessary,  in  action. 
If  you  say  that  it  is  a  sovereign,  and  won't 
give  me  twenty  shillings  for  it,  your 
words  are  not  a  living  truth. 

Now,  philosophy  aims  at  the  living 
truth — a  truth  you  can  live  by,  and  act 
on.  Philosophy,  when  it  is  practical,  is 
not  merely  a  system  of  truth  but  a  method 
of  action.  It  is  not  merely  abstract 
truth  but  living  truth.  It  is,  that  is 
to  say,  not  merely  the  truth  about  what  is, 
but  something  more — the  truth  about 
what  ought  to  be,  the  only  truth  in  the 
light  of  which  it  is  possible  to  live.  When 


IO4  Philosophy 

a  man  acts,  he  intends  to  do  something 
which  is  as  yet  not  done;  and  he  intends 
to  do  it  because  it  seems  good  to  him  to 
do  it.  He  has  an  end  in  view  which  he 
means  to  accomplish;  and  he  means  to 
accomplish  it,  because  he  thinks  good  to 
do  so.  The  end  at  which  he  aims  and 
the  good  which  he  means  to  realise  are 
the  same  thing.  But  the  end  and  the 
good  which  he  aims  at  must  be  known  to 
him,  otherwise  he  could  not  aim  at  it, 
and  intend  it.  Being  known  to  him,  it 
must  have  some  reality  and  existence; 
but,  being  something  which  he  is  engaged 
in  doing  and  resolved  to  accomplish,  it 
is  something  not  yet  achieved,  not  yet 
realised.  The  end  and  the  good,  there- 
fore, that  he  has  in  view  is  real,  because 
it  is  known  to  him  and  intended  by  him; 
and  yet  it  is  not  perfectly  realised  because 
he  is  still  engaged  in  doing  it  and  has  not 
yet  fully  done  it. 

Now,  that  is  the  description  and  char- 
acter both  of  every  moment  of  our  lives, 
and  of  all  our  life.  We  are,  at  every 


Philosophy  in  Practice        105 

moment,  and  all  through  our  active  life, 
engaged  on  something  which  is  as  yet 
not  done  but  only  in  the  process  of  being 
done.  The  end  and  the  good  is  never 
at  any  moment  realised,  but  always  and 
at  all  times  in  process  of  being  realised. 
The  end  and  the  good  is  never  done 
but  is  always  to  be  done.  It  is  in  this 
that  the  continuity  of  our  lives  consists. 
What  makes  them  continuous  is  the  fact 
that,  all  the  time,  we  are  engaged  in 
doing  something  not  yet  achieved ;  we  are 
always  in  process  of  doing  something  not 
yet  done.  Life's  work  is  never  done.  It 
is  never  fully  accomplished.  And  the 
work  of  life  is  the  good  and  the  end 
which  you  are  always  striving  to  realise 
and  are  always  finding  to  be  not  yet 
realised. 

To  some  extent  and  in  some  sense,  the 
good  exists  and  is  known  to  you,  other- 
wise you  could  not  aim  at  it  or  strive  after 
it.  Your  will  is  set  on  it,  and  your 
action  directed  to  it;  and  to  some  extent 
you  are  achieving  it.  And  whatever  you 


io6  Philosophy 

are  engaged  in  doing,  you  are  trying  to  do 
because  you  think  it  good,  and  because 
you  think  it  ought  to  be  done,  and 
because  you  think  you  can  do  it.  You 
would  not  be  trying  to  do  it,  if  you 
thought  you  could  not  do  it,  or  if  you  did 
not  think  good  to  do  it. 

Well,  then,  if  at  every  moment  of  our 
lives  we  are  engaged  in  doing  something 
that  is  as  yet  not  done,  and  if  we  are 
trying  to  do  it  because  we  think  we  can 
do  it,  and  because  we  see  fit,  or  think  it 
good,  to  do  it,  what  is  the  end  or  good, 
the  work  of  life,  which  is  never  fully 
accomplished  but  is  always  yet  to  be 
done?  What  is  the  meaning  of  experi- 
ence— that  experience  which  is  the  life 
we  live?  What  is  the  good  which,  in 
experience,  is  partly  disclosed  to  us  but 
never  fully  realised  by  us,  and  which  is  or 
may  be  partly,  but  is  never  wholly, 
attained  by  us? 

Those  are  the  very  questions  from 
which  we  started  out  in  the  first  chapter 
— the  questions  which  philosophy  is  the 


Philosophy  in  Practice        107 

attempt  to  answer.  And  they  are  practi- 
cal questions.  Further,  they  are  ques- 
tions to  which  every  man  is  always  giving 
a  practical  answer  by  the  way  in  which  he 
lives.  But  though  he  is  giving  a  practical 
answer,  he  rarely  stays  to  consider  what 
the  answer  is,  or  whether  it  is  the  right 
one.  The  moment  he  stays — if  ever  he 
does  stay — to  put  those  questions  to 
himself,  he  becomes  a  philosopher,  and 
tries'  to  frame  some  answer  to  them. 

We  see  now,  however,  that  experience  is 
not  merely  something  that  we  suffer  but 
also  something  that  we  do;  and  that  the 
important  question  is  not  so  much, 
What  is  the  nature  of  the  experience 
which  one  has,  or  through  which  one 
goes?  not  so  much,  What  do  I  suffer?  as, 
What  should  I  do?  The  fundamental 
fact  about  our  experience  is  that  we  are 
always,  at  every  moment  of  our  conscious 
lives,  trying  to  do  something  and  in 
process  of  doing  it. 

The  most  important  question,  then, 
that  we  can  raise  is,  whether  we  are 


io8  Philosophy 

engaged  in  trying  to  do  the  right  thing. 
And  if  we  want  to  answer  the  question, 
as  we  do  want,  seeing  that  we  are  philo- 
sophers— that  is  to  say,  practical  men, 
we  can  turn  only  to  experience.  To  it 
alone  can  we  look  for  an  answer,  because 
we  have  nothing  but  experience  to  turn 
to.  And  the  experience  to  which  we 
have  to  turn  is  the  experience  of  living 
beings  who  are  engaged  always  in  trying 
to  do  something  and  are  in  process  of 
doing  it.  That  is  in  truth  and  in  fact 
the  only  experience  that  is  known  to  us. 

Experience  is  not  mere  knowledge,  or 
knowledge  of  existence :  it  consists  in  what 
a  conscious  being  tries  to  do,  and  is  in 
constant  process  of  doing.  It  is  conscious 
being  and  doing. 

We  must,  therefore,  now  revise  the  con- 
ception of  experience  which  we  adopted  in 
the  previous  chapters  when  we  were 
concerned  principally  with  the  question  of 
knowledge  and  existence — the  questions 
whether  matter  in  motion  alone  existed, 
whether  existence  without  knowledge  was 


Philosophy  in  Practice        109 

an  intelligible  proposition,  whether  loose 
and  separate  sensations  could  exist  with- 
out being  known  by  any  person. 

In  the  earlier  chapters,  our  supposition 
was  that  knowledge  and  existence  were 
inseparable,  as  are  the  sides  of  a  curve. 
And  we  left  action  altogether  out  of 
account.  But  we  stuck  to  the  sup- 
position that  experience  is  in  some  sort  a 
whole:  we  were  logically  bound  to  do 
so  because  our  purpose  was  to  find  out 
what  could  be  said  of  experience  as  a 
whole — whether  as  a  whole  it  had  any 
meaning  and  any  good.  We  recognised 
that  experience  had  two  sides  or  presented 
two  aspects,  mind  and  matter,  knowledge 
and  existence,  subject  and  object.  On 
the  outside  of  the  curve  lay  the  world 
of  material  things;  on  the  inside,  the 
world  of  thoughts  and  sensations.  As 
regards  the  outside  of  the  curve,  science  is 
every  day  making  it  more  and  more 
probable  that  through  all  the  host  of 
material  things  one  system  runs;  and 
that  there  is  some  reason  for  supposing 


i  io  Philosophy 

that  that  side  of  experience  forms  a 
whole. 

But  what  of  the  inside  of  the  curve,  on 
which  lie  thoughts,  sensations,  emotions, 
passions,  desires?  On  the  inside  there 
lies  evidently  and  undeniably  not  one 
mind  or  human  being,  but  countless 
minds,  all  the  individual  human  beings 
that  make  up  the  human  race.  Well, 
here  we  can  see  that  even  they  have  some 
unity  and  in  some  sort  form  a  whole. 

In  the  first  place,  they  are  not  wholly 
cut  off  from  one  another:  they  communi- 
cate with  each  other.  They  have  thoughts 
in  common.  They  have  or  may  have 
common  purposes.  They  take  or  can 
take  common  action  to  realise  the  pur- 
poses and  carry  out  the  ideas  that  they 
have  in  common.  We  live  to  a  large  ex- 
tent in  and  for  one  another.  Indeed, were 
that  not  so,  no  one  of  us  could  live  at  all. 

Again,  we  say,  and  with  more  truth 
than  perhaps  we  imagine,  that  we  can 
enter  into  one  another's  thoughts.  And 
when  we  do  this,  and  put  ourselves  into 


Philosophy  in  Practice        in 

the  other  man's  place,  we  find  the  dif- 
ference between  us  less  vast:  in  spite  of 
apparent  differences,  the  man's  a  man  for 
all  that.  There  is  the  bond,  which 
unites  or  is  capable  of  uniting  all  the 
countless  individuals,  who  occupy  the 
inside  of  our  curve. 

But  though  we  thus  see  vaguely  that 
what  is  on  the  inside  of  the  curve  forms, 
in  a  way,  a  unity  of  which  the  individuals 
are  members;  and  that  what  is  on  the 
outside  of  the  curve  probably  forms  one 
system;  still,  even  if  this  be  so,  what  we 
have  on  our  hands  forms  two  wholes. 
And  the  supposition  which  we  originally 
put  forward  was:  Let  us  suppose  that 
experience  forms  one  whole.  If,  there- 
fore, we  are  to  suppose  that  experience 
forms  one  whole,  evidently  we  must  give 
up  the  simile  of  the  curve — that  is  to  say, 
we  must  recognise  that  the  division  of 
experience  into  knowledge  and  existence, 
one  on  the  inside  and  the  other  on  the 
outside  of  the  curve,  is  a  distinction 
which  we  draw,  and  must  draw,  when  we 


H2  Philosophy 

see  in  experience  only  knowledge  and 
existence.  But  it  is  not  a  distinction 
which  we  can  maintain,  when  we  come  to 
see  what  is  a  simple  and  undeniable  fact, 
viz.,  that  we  are  active  beings,  always 
and  at  every  moment  of  our  conscious 
lives  engaged  in  trying  to  do  something 
and  in  process  of  doing  it.  That  is  the 
character  and  actual  nature  of  experience : 
it  is  conscious  being  and  doing.  And  if 
we  suppose,  as  we  do  suppose  or  assume, 
that  experience  forms  one  whole,  though 
it  contains  an  infinite  number  of  parts, 
then  that  whole  must  be  realised  in  the 
existence,  and  known  to  the  mind,  of  a 
supreme  being,  who  is  at  once  omniscient 
and  perfect — the  being,  in  short,  whom 
we  call  God.  Only  to  Him  is  real  exist- 
ence and  full  knowledge  of  the  whole 
possible;  and  thus  each  one  of  the  parts, 
as  it  comes  to  comprehend  that  the  parts 
cannot  exist  without  the  whole,  declares: 
"Without  Thee  I  cannot  live."  It  is 
God,  "in  whom  we  live  and  move  and 
have  our  being." 


Philosophy  in  Practice        113 

Thus  our  assumption  that  experience  is 
a  whole,  and  has  a  meaning  and  a  good, 
proves,  when  we  examine  it,  to  require  a 
previous  assumption,  viz.,  that  God  is, 
and  that  in  His  will,  and  in  doing  His 
will,  our  good  and  the  only  good  consists. 

Philosophy,  then,  is  practical.  It  does 
not  deal  with  abstractions,  but  with  life 
as  it  is  lived  and  as  it  should  be  lived. 
Always  and  at  every  moment  we  are 
engaged  in  trying  to  do  something  and  in 
process  of  doing  it.  As  practical  men 
we  are  philosophers — even  if  we  are 
philosophers  without  knowing  it.  And 
it  is  only  so  far  as  we  are  philosophers, 
and  consciously  philosophers,  that  we  are 
truly  practical. 

Even  so,  much  or  most,  of  what  we  do, 
we  do  without  knowing  to  what  end  it 
tends  or  what  results  it  will  bring  about. 
The  steam  plough  is  the  direct  descend- 
ant of  earlier  forms  of  the  plough;  and 
they  were  all  descended  from  the  digging- 
stick  first  used.  And  yet  the  man  who 
used  it  first  had  no  conception  of  what  it 


1 14  Philosophy 

would  eventually  become.  So  we  for 
the  most  part  are  similarly  ignorant  of 
what  will  come  of  what  we,  as  active, 
living,  conscious  beings  are  always,  and 
at  every  moment  of  our  conscious  lives — 
at  this  moment,  for  instance — engaged  in 
trying  to  do  and  are  in  process  of  doing. 
That  ignorance  would  be  appalling,  if 
you  and  I  were  the  only  conscious  beings 
in  existence;  or  if  all  conscious  beings 
were  as  ignorant  as  you  and  I  of  the  mean- 
ing of  experience  and  of  the  good  that  is 
being  achieved  in  the  process  of  experi- 
ence. But  we  cannot  believe  that  experi- 
ence is  thus  blind  throughout. 

Nor  would  the  supposition,  made  by 
philosophy,  that  experience  expresses  a 
meaning  and  attains  a  good,  be  of  much 
value;  nor  has  it  indeed  any  practical 
force  so  long  as  it  remains  a  supposition 
merely.  Unless  it  is  not  merely  known 
but  also  felt,  it  is  not  practical  philosophy 
or  actual  experience  but  a  mere  abstrac- 
tion from  experience,  as  lifeless  as  that 
other  abstraction,  matter;  and  as  unmean- 


Philosophy  in  Practice        115 

ing  as  those  other  abstractions,  loose 
and  separate  sensations.  If  the  supposi- 
tion is  to  be  anything  more  than  an 
abstraction  merely  known,  if  it  is  to  be  a 
reality  felt — still  more,  if  it  is  to  be  a  reality 
acted  on,  then  the  man  who  is  to  feel  it 
and  to  realise  it  must  have  access  in  his 
heart  to  God. 

The  questions  from  which  we  started  at 
the  beginning  were :  What  is  the  meaning 
of  experience?  What  does  it  all  come  to? 
What  is  the  good  of  it  all?  And  philo- 
sophy, I  said,  was  the  attempt  to  find  out 
whether  there  is  an  answer  to  them,  and 
if  so,  what.  For  the  purpose  of  finding 
out,  it  was,  I  said,  open  to  us  to  make 
any  supposition  or  assumption  or  hypo- 
thesis that  we  liked.  The  one  and  only 
rule  of  the  game  was  that  as  the  hypo- 
thesis or  supposition  or  assumption  had 
no  other  purpose  than  to  provide  an 
explanation  of  experience,  any  suppo- 
sition, which  failed  to  explain  experience 
satisfactorily,  must  be  ruled  off  the 
board. 


1 1 6  Philosophy 

I  also  said  that  as  experience  is  con- 
tinually growing,  any  supposition  we 
might  make  could  only  be  regarded  as 
provisional  and  not  final,  even  if  it  seemed 
to  explain  all  the  facts  known  up  to  the 
time.  But  there  is  no  supposition  which 
does  explain  all  the  known  facts  to  the 
satisfaction  of  all  philosophers.  And  that 
is  one  reason  which  makes  philosophy  so 
interesting  and  so  exciting.  And  for  fear 
you  should  imagine,  when  you  have  got  a 
supposition  which  commends  itself  to 
you,  that  all  the  excitement  is  over,  and 
that  nothing  but  the  shouting  remains 
to  be  done,  I  will  just  indicate  one  or  two 
of  the  many  points  on  which  a  consider- 
able difference  of  opinion  exists. 

Like  the  philosopher,  the  man  who  is  a 
philosopher  without  being  aware  of  it 
makes  assumptions,  all  of  which  require 
testing  by  experience,  and  some  of  which 
fail  under  the  test.  One  assumption 
made  by  the  ordinary  man,  and  adopted 
by  science,  is  that  matter  and  material 
things  exist  whether  anybody  is  aware 


Philosophy  in  Practice        117 

of  them  or  not;  and  this  supposition  is 
disputed  by  some  philosophers,  who  sug- 
gest the  assumption  that  the  only  things 
that  are  known  or  can  be  known  are 
objects  of  knowledge,  which  exist  only 
as  known  to  exist.  The  first  supposition, 
that  matter  and  material  things  exist, 
whether  anybody  knows  them  or  not, 
carries  with  it  the  further  supposition 
that  such  material  things  exist  in  space — 
a  supposition  which  is  made  alike  by  the 
ordinary  non-philosopher  and  by  the 
man  of  science.  If  this  supposition  is 
true,  then  it  ought  to  be  at  least  an 
intelligible  supposition,  consistent  with 
itself  and  with  any  other  supposition 
which  we  make. 

But  when  we  come  to  examine  the 
notion  of  space,  we  find  it  inconsistent 
with  itself.  It  is  inconsistent  with  itself 
in  the  first  place,  because  we  cannot  con- 
ceive whether  space  is  or  is  not  infinite. 
One  or  the  other  it  ought  to  be:  it  cannot 
be  both  infinite  and  not  infinite.  And 
yet,  if  we  suppose  that  space  really  exists, 


n8  Philosophy 

we  find  that  we  must  contradict  ourselves 
and  say  both  that  it  is  infinite  and  that  it 
cannot  be  infinite.  It  appears  first  one 
and  then  the  other;  and  both  appearances 
cannot  be  real.  Hence  the  other  sup- 
position, that  space  is  only  an  appearance 
and  not  a  reality. 

In  the  next  place,  the  very  term  we  use 
for  the  purpose  of  expressing  the  sup- 
position that  space  exists — the  terms 
"here"  and  "there" — contradict  each 
other,  and  each  of  them  contradicts  itself. 
Consider  both  points.  They  contradict 
each  other:  what  do  we  mean  by  "here"? 
Certainly  we  mean,  or  rather  we  suppose 
that  we  mean,  "not  there."  Very  well! 
then.  By  "here"  we  may  mean,  here 
in  this  room,  here  in  this  county,  or  here 
in  the  north  of  England,  or  here  in  Eng- 
land, or  here  in  this  world,  or  here  in  this 
universe — and  beyond  that  we  cannot 
go,  there  is  no  "there"  left.  The  "here" 
swallows  up  the  "there";  they  contradict 
each  other.  Everything  is  contained 
in  the  "here,"  and  there  is  no  "there." 


Philosophy  in  Practice        119 

But  by  "here"  we  may  also  mean  here 
in  this  room,  here  at  this  desk,  here  on  this 
paper,  or  this  word  on  the  paper,  or  this 
letter  in  the  word,  or  this  dot  upon  the 
letter  "i, "  and  a  dot  is  a  point,  and  a 
point  is  position  without  magnitude, 
something,  that  is  to  say,  which  has 
nothing  inside  it  and  no  room  inside  it 
for  anything — that  is  to  say,  which  is  not 
space  at  all,  for  space  is  supposed  to  be 
that  in  which  something  is.  Thus  the 
very  notion  of  "here,"  that  is  of  space, 
contradicts  itself. 

And  yet  you  believe  in  the  assumption 
that  space  exists;  you  suppose  that  it  does. 
But  the  supposition  is  one  on  which  it  is 
possible  for  a  difference  of  opinion  to 
exist.  It  is  a  supposition  which  is  made 
to  account  for  that  other  supposition 
that  there  are  material  things  which 
exist  whether  any  conscious  being — 
whether  God  Himself — knows  them  or 
not. 

So  much  for  space.  But  there  is 
another  assumption  which  we  all  make 


120  Philosophy 

without  thinking  about  it;  and  that  is 
that  time  exists. 

Once  more,  if  we  make  a  supposition,  it 
ought  to  be  one  which  does  not  contradict 
itself:  if  it  is  self -contradictory,  there  must 
be  something  wrong  with  it.  Well,  look 
at  this  supposition  that  time  exists. 
There  is  past  time,  present  time,  and 
future  time,  or  we  may  say  that  there  is 
the  "now"  and  the  "not  now."  And 
these  two  terms  like  the  "here"  and  the 
"there"  contradict  each  other;  and  each 
of  them  contradicts  itself.  For  what 
do  we  mean  by  "now"?  Obviously, 
there  can  be  no  "now"  unless  there  is 
also  a  "then":  there  could  be  no  present 
unless  there  were  a  past  and  a  future. 
But  the  past  exists  no  longer  and  the 
future  has  not  yet  come  into  existence — 
that  is  to  say,  both  the  future  and  the 
past  are  non-existent.  But  we  said  just 
now  that  there  could  be  no  present 
unless  there  were  a  past  and  a  future. 
And  now  we  see  that  the  past  and  the 
future  do  not  exist. 


Philosophy  in  Practice        121 

Perhaps  we  shall  see  this  more  clearly, 
if  we  ask  ourselves  what  we  mean  by 
the  present,  by  "now."  "Now"  means 
the  present  time,  the  present  hour,  the 
present  day,  the  present  age,  the  pres- 
ent century,  the  present  dispensation. 
The  "now"  spreads  itself  out  as  far 
as  ever  we  can  go  and  swallows  up 
every  "then"  that  comes  in  front  of  it. 
Everything  that  exists,  every  event,  I 
should  say,  that  takes  place,  takes  place 
"now."  Very  good!  but  look  at  this 
"now."  It  means  the  present  time, 
the  present  hour,  the  present  lecture, 
the  present  minute;  but  the  present 
minute  has  sixty  seconds  in  it;  then 
"now"  means  the  present  second;  but 
that  is  over,  long  before  you  can  get  the 
words  out.  The  present  moment  is,  as  it 
were,  the  line  which  divides  the  future 
from  the  past.  And  a  line,  as  you 
know,  is  length  without  breadth.  Length 
without  breadth!  There  is  no  such 
thing.  Then  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
the  present:  it  is  just  as  imaginary  as 


122  Philosophy 

length  without  breadth.  It  is  the  imagin- 
ary division  between  the  past  and  the 
future.  And  the  past  and  the  future 
do  not  exist.  The  one  is  already  over  and 
non-existent;  the  other  does  not  yet  exist, 
for  it  has  not  come  into  existence.  The 
time-divisions,  past,  present,  and  future, 
are  all  alike  imaginary.  They  are  divi- 
sions and  distinctions  which  we  suppose 
to  exist;  but  the  supposition  is  simply  a 
supposition  which  we  make;  and  it  is 
a  supposition  which  contradicts  itself. 
And  it  is  a  supposition  contradictory 
to  our  belief  that  all  things  —  both 
those  things  which  we  call  present  and 
those  which  we  call  future — alike  are 
known  to  God. 

Evidently,  therefore,  this  supposition  is 
one  about  which  a  difference  of  opinion 
may  exist:  people  may  fairly  ask  them- 
selves whether  the  supposition  is  one 
which  we  can  really  hold,  or  really  under- 
stand— whether  it  is  not  really  self- 
contradictory. 

It  appears  as  though  the  present  alone 


Philosophy  in  Practice        123 

existed ;  and  it  also  appears  as  though  the 
present  were  a  purely  imaginary  line  of 
division  between  the  past  and  the  future. 
It  appears  first  one  and  then  the  other; 
and  both  appearances  cannot  be  real. 
And  we  have  seen  that  space,  in  the  same 
way,  appears  both  to  be  finite  and  infinite, 
as  does  time  itself. 

Thus  we  are  brought  face  to  face  with  a 
third  point  on  which  a  considerable 
difference  of  opinion  exists  amongst  philo- 
sophers— the  relation  of  appearance  to 
reality,  and  what  we  mean  by  the  two 
terms. 

A  thing,  such  as  a  building,  looks 
rather  different — presents  a  rather  differ- 
ent appearance — from  different  points  of 
view. 

From  one  point  of  view  you  see  one 
side  of  it,  from  another  another;  from 
each  of  the  sixty-four  different  points 
of  the  compass  it  presents  a  differ- 
ent appearance.  And  from  the  inside 
it  appears  different  again.  A  surface, 
which  feels  smooth,  and  looks  smooth, 


124  Philosophy 

when  examined  by  the  naked  eye,  does 
not  appear  smooth,  when  examined  by 
a  magnifying  glass  or  microscope.  Which 
is  it  really — smooth  or  not  smooth?  A 
thing  which  appears  simple,  and  for  long 
is  considered  simple,  may  prove  on  fur- 
ther examination  to  be  compound :  as  you 
know,  science,  which  discovered  that 
things  appeared  to  be  made  up  of  atoms, 
then  discovered  that  the  atoms  were 
made  up  of  molecules,  and  then  that  the 
molecules  were  only  appearance  and  the 
reality  was  something  else,  electrons,  or 
what  not.  And  probably  they  in  their 
turn  will  be  pronounced  to  be  ways  in 
which  the  ultimate  reality  appears  to  us. 
Then,  can  we  ever  know  the  ultimate 
reality  of  things?  Surely,  it  must  always 
appear  to  us,  if  we  are  to  know  anything 
about  it.  And  if  so,  it  is  the  appearance 
alone  which  will  be  known  to  us.  At 
least,  so  some  philosophers  argue.  But 
other  philosophers  say:  You  talk  of 
appearance;  well,  then,  something  ap- 
pears, and  what  appears  is  the  real  thing, 


Philosophy  in  Practice        125 

reality.  Take  the  case  of  the  building 
which  presents  sixty-four  different  ap- 
pearances from  the  sixty-four  different 
points  of  the  compass.  It  is  one  and  the 
same  building  which  appears.  Whatever 
point  you  view  it  from,  it  is  the  same 
building :  view  it  from  sixty-four  different 
points,  and  it  is  still  the  same  building. 
Any  one  appearance  can  only  be  mislead- 
ing if  it  is  mistaken  for  the  only  appear- 
ance that  the  thing  can  have  and  is  alleged 
to  be  the  reality  and  the  whole.  We, 
indeed,  never  see  the  building  or  any- 
thing else  from  every  point  of  view  at  the 
same  time.  But,  though  with  the  senses 
we  never  can  see  the  whole  building,  we 
can  conceive,  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
we  always  do  conceive  it  to  be  a  whole; 
and  the  whole  is  what  we  conceive  to  be 
the  reality.  Very  good,  then  what  is 
true  of  the  building  is  true  of  the  universe: 
we  never  can  with  our  eyes  see  the  uni- 
verse as  a  whole,  but  we  do  conceive  it  to 
be  a  whole.  As  it  presents  itself  to  us 
through  our  senses,  it  presents  only 


126  Philosophy 

appearance;  and  it  is  a  mistake  we  make 
if  we  imagine  that  the  appearances  pre- 
sented are  the  reality  and  the  whole. 

Still  some  philosophers  hold  that  reality, 
even  if  it  appears  to  us,  can  but  appear; 
and  consequently  that  we  can  never  know 
anything  but  the  appearance.  Perhaps 
the  truth  is  that  "we  now  see  as  through  a 
glass  darkly";  and  that  God  alone  is  not 
separated  from  reality  by  appearances, 
but  is  Himself  the  reality  and  the  source 
of  the  reality,  that  He  alone  knows  as  it 
really  is. 

In  our  experience  we  find  not  matter 
alone,  as  the  Materialist  says,  nor  sen- 
sations alone,  as  the  Sensationalist  says; 
we  find,  further,  not  only  knowledge  and 
existence,  but  also  action  and  will. 

Philosophy,  therefore,  which  inquires 
of  experience,  what  it  all  comes  to,  can- 
not help  inquiring  also  what  is  the  good  of 
it  all.  That  is  a  practical  inquiry,  and 
philosophy,  therefore,  is  practical:  philo- 
sophy does  not,  like  science,  deal  with 
abstractions,  but  seeks  a  living  truth — 


Philosophy  in  Practice        127 

that  is,  a  truth  you  can  live  by  and  act 
on.  When  a  man  acts,  he  has  an  end 
in  view  which  he  wishes  to  accomplish, 
because  it  seems  good  to  him  to  do  so. 
At  every  moment  of  our  lives,  and  all 
through  our  lives,  we  are  engaged  on 
something  which  is  as  yet  not  done,  but 
only  in  the  process  of  being  done.  That 
is  the  fundamental  fact  about  our  experi- 
ence; and  consequently  the  most  import- 
ant question  that  can  be  raised  is  whether 
we  are  engaged  on  the  right  thing. 

Thus,  once  more  we  are  brought  up 
against  the  question,  what  does  our 
experience  mean — what  is  the  good  of  it 
all?  Hitherto  we  have  likened  experi- 
ence to  the  two  sides  of  a  curve ;  and  now, 
even  if  we  assume  that  material  things, 
on  the  outside  of  the  curve,  form  one 
system,  and  that  the  countless  minds, 
on  the  inside  of  it,  are  or  might  be  united 
into  one  system  by  the  bond  of  love, 
we  still  have  on  our  hands  two  systems, 
and  not  one  whole. 

But  if  we  are  to  adhere  to  our  original 


128  Philosophy 

assumption  that  experience  forms  one 
whole,  then  that  whole,  the  one  ultimate 
and  fundamental  reality,  must  be  God. 
That  is  a  further  supposition  implied 
by  our  original  assumption.  If,  however, 
it  is  to  be  more  than  a  mere  abstraction, 
if  it  is  to  be  a  reality  felt  and  acted  on, 
then  the  man  who  is  to  feel  it  and  to 
realise  it  must  have  access  in  his  heart  to 
God. 


CHAPTER  V 

PERSONALITY    AND    THE    WHOLE 

THE  moment  a  man  begins  to  reflect  on 
his  experience  and  to  ask  himself ,  what  it 
all  comes  to,  he  becomes  a  philosopher: 
when  he  inquires  what  it  all  means, 
he  assumes  that  experience  is  a  whole. 
When  we  say  of  God  that  "in  Him  we  live 
and  move  and  have  our  being, "  we  make 
a  further  philosophical  assumption,  viz., 
that  the  whole  is  a  personality.  But 
this,  which,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
philosophy,  is  an  assumption,  is,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  man  who  feels  and 
knows  that  in  his  heart  he  has  access  to 
God,  no  assumption  but  the  living  truth. 
Treating  it,  however,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  philosophy,  as  an  assumption, 
and  as  an  assumption  made  for  the  pur- 
pose of  explaining  experience,  we  have  to 
9  129 


130  Philosophy 

inquire  what  consequences  flow  from  it 
and  whether  they  also  help  to  explain 
experience. 

If,  as  we  assume,  experience  is  a  whole, 
then  its  parts  are  not  independent  either 
of  each  other  or  of  the  whole :  they  have  no 
separate,  independent  existence.  On  the 
contrary,  they  are  interdependent. 

An  illustration  will  perhaps  make  this 
clearer,  and  we  may  borrow  one  from  a 
Hindu  philosopher.  A  chariot  is  made 
up  of  the  wheels,  pole,  and  body;  so  long 
as  the  chariot  exists,  they  are  its  parts. 
But,  take  the  chariot  to  pieces,  cast 
the  pole  down  in  one  place,  the  body  in 
another,  the  wheels  somewhere  else,  and 
there  is  no  longer  any  chariot.  If,  then, 
no  chariot  exists,  it  has  of  course  no  parts; 
and  the  pole,  body,  and  wheels,  conse- 
quently, are  no  longer  parts  of  the  chariot, 
for  there  is  no  chariot  for  them  to  be  parts 
of.  If  you  went  to  a  watch-maker  for  a 
watch,  and  he  offered  you  a  trayful  of 
wheels,  levers,  and  so  on,  and  tried  to 
pass  them  off  as  being  a  watch,  you 


Personality  and  the  Whole    131 

would  say  that  you  wanted  a  watch,  not 
a  heap  of  wheels  and  levers.  You  would 
say  and  feel  that  they  were  by  no  means 
the  same  thing  as  a  watch. 

Now,  we  may  put  this  in  general  terms 
and  say  that  the  parts  of  anything  are 
by  no  means  the  same  as  the  whole. 
And,  consequently,  a  whole  is  by  no 
means  the  same  thing  as  the  parts.  We 
can  go  further,  indeed,  and  say  that 
the  parts  have  no  existence  separate 
from  the  whole;  for,  if  the  whole  is  taken 
to  pieces,  the  whole  ceases  to  exist;  and, 
if  there  is  no  whole,  it  can  have  no  parts; 
and,  only  where  there  is  a  whole,  can  there 
be  any  parts. 

But  now,  having  gone  thus  far,  can  we 
say  that  the  chariot  is  a  whole?  Obvi- 
ously without  horses  the  chariot  is  not  a 
chariot  in  the  full  sense  of  being  able  to 
fulfil  its  function  of  carrying  the  driver 
about;  it  is  just  as  useless  as  the  watch- 
maker's tray  of  levers  and  wheels.  With- 
out horses,  the  chariot  is  not  a  chariot,  for 
without  them  it  won't  go,  just  as  without 


132  Philosophy 

wheels  it  can't  go.  But,  further,  the 
driver  is  just  as  necessary  as  the  wheels 
or  the  horses.  And  unless  there  were 
ground  for  the  chariot  to  go  on,  and  places 
for  it  to  travel  to  and  from,  the  chariot 
would  not  be  a  chariot. 

Plainly,  then,  the  chariot  is  part  of  the 
world.  And,  speaking  again  in  general 
terms,  we  may  say  that  everything  which 
has  size  or  extension,  and  occupies  space, 
is  part  of  the  spatial  world  or  whole. 
And  evidently  the  parts  cannot  exist 
without  the  whole;  nor  can  there  be  any 
whole  without  the  parts.  Thus  we  come 
round  to  our  starting-point,  which  was 
that  parts  are  not  independent  of  each 
other,  or  of  the  whole  to  which  they 
belong,  and  of  which  they  are  parts:  they 
have  no  separate,  independent  existence. 

But,  if  this  is  true  of  the  world  regarded 
from  the  point  of  view  of  space,  perhaps  it 
may  be  true  of  the  world  regarded  from 
other  points  of  view.  But  from  what 
other  point  of  view  can  it  be  regarded? 
Well,  we  can  regard  it  from  the  point  of 


Personality  and  the  Whole    133 

view  of  time.  We  say  that  "things  take 
time  to  do,"  meaning  that  the  process 
of  doing  them  takes  time.  And  a  process 
is  something  that  is  going  on  and  is  not 
yet  complete.  It  is  not  the  whole,  but 
part  of  the  whole.  Naturally,  however, 
we  are  tempted  to  say  that,  when  the 
thing  is  done,  it  is  done — whole  and 
complete.  But,  so  too,  we  were  tempted 
to  say  that  when  the  pole,  wheels,  and 
body  were  put  together,  then  we  had  a 
chariot,  whole  and  complete.  But,  when 
we  came  to  think  of  it,  we  recognised 
that  the  horses  were  just  as  necessary  as 
the  wheels;  and  that  without  the  horses 
the  chariot  was  not  whole  and  complete. 
Well,  so  too  it  is  with  things  that  take 
time:  no  sooner  is  one  done  than  another 
is  begun.  Indeed,  we  do  one  thing  which 
takes  time  for  the  sake  of  the  next,  which 
also  takes  time:  we  eat  for  the  sake  of 
being  strengthened  by  the  food,  we  sleep 
for  the  sake  of  being  refreshed  for  the 
next  day's  work.  Eating  and  sleeping, 
like  everything  else  that  we  do,  are 


134  Philosophy 

processes  through  which  we  go.  And 
processes  are  going  on  all  around  us,  also ; 
and  one  process  leads  on  to  another 
always.  That  is  to  say,  each  process  is 
but  a  part.  And  parts,  as  we  have  seen, 
cannot  exist  save  in  the  whole,  to  which 
they  belong,  and  of  which  they  are  parts. 
The  various  processes — both  those  in 
which  we  are  engaged  and  those  which  we 
watch  going  on — are  parts  of  the  world- 
process  as  a  whole,  and  cannot  be  con- 
ceived as  having  any  existence  without  it. 
There  can  be  no  parts,  unless  there  is  a 
whole.  Thus,  when  we  consider  time,  we 
come  to  the  same  conclusion  as  we  arrived 
at  when  we  were  considering  space,  viz., 
that  parts — in  this  case  moments  of  time 
— are  not,  after  all,  independent  of  each 
other  or  of  the  whole  to  which  they  belong 
and  of  which  they  are  parts. 

The  world,  then,  regarded  from  the 
point  of  view  of  space,  is  a  whole,  and 
none  of  its  parts  has  any  existence 
separate  from,  or  independent  of  the 
whole.  And,  regarded  from  the  point  of 


Personality  and  the  Whole    135 

view  of  time,  as  a  process,  the  world- 
process  is  a  whole,  whose  parts  or  mo- 
ments imply  the  whole,  and  cannot  be 
separated  from  it. 

Then,  is  there  any  other  point  of  view 
from  which  the  world  can  be  regarded? 
For  if  there  is,  then  we  ought  to  consider 
whether  the  world,  when  regarded  from  it, 
presents  the  appearance  of  a  whole. 

There  is  another  point  of  view  from 
which  we  can  regard  the  world.  We  can 
regard  it  from  the  point  of  view  of  will  and 
action.  And  when  we  come  to  examine 
it  from  that  point  of  view,  we  shall  find 
that  it  is  a  whole,  the  parts  of  which  are 
not  detached  from  one  another  or  inde- 
pendent either  of  one  another,  or  of  the 
whole  of  which  they  are  parts. 

Here,  too,  in  the  world  of  will  and 
action,  at  first  we  find  ourselves  in  the 
same  attitude  of  mind  as  we  were  when 
we  considered  the  chariot.  We  are  en- 
gaged on  doing  something;  we  do  it; 
and  we  regard  what  we  have  done,  the 
action  that  we  willed,  as  a  whole,  com- 


136  Philosophy 

plete  in  itself.  So,  too,  at  first,  we 
regarded  the  chariot  as  being  complete  in 
itself,  a  whole;  but  we  soon  saw,  that 
without  horses  it  was  not  really  complete, 
nor  without  a  driver.  In  exactly  the 
same  way,  when  we  come  to  look  at  any 
action,  willed  and  performed,  we  shall  see 
that  it  was  willed  and  performed  with 
some  purpose  and  for  the  sake  of  some 
end.  If  we  had  had  no  purpose  or  object 
in  view,  we  should  not  have  done  it: 
as  the  chariot  without  a  driver  would  not 
be  complete,  so  an  action  without  a  pur- 
pose would  not  be  a  rational  action  or  an 
action  willed. 

We  are,  therefore,  in  the  world  of  will 
and  action,  always  doing  something,  for 
the  sake  of  something  else.  Our  actions 
are  always  parts  of  our  purpose;  and, 
being  parts,  they  imply  a  whole.  In  that 
respect,  it  is  the  same  with  them  as  we 
saw  it  to  be  with  the  parts  of  space: 
everything  that  has  size  and  occupies 
space  is  part  of  the  spatial  world  or 
whole;  and  the  whole  cannot  exist  without 


Personality  and  the  Whole    137 

any  of  its  parts.  The  whole  implies  its 
parts;  and  the  parts  imply  the  whole. 
And  it  is,  as  we  saw,  the  same  with  time 
as  with  space:  all  the  various  processes 
that  are  going  on,  in  us  and  around  us,  are 
parts  of  the  world-process  as  a  whole, 
and  cannot  be  conceived  as  existing 
without  it. 

The  world  of  will  and  action  then  forms 
a  whole,  just  as  the  world  of  space  may  be 
regarded  as  a  whole — or  the  world  of  time. 
We  may  regard  the  world-process,  and 
the  time  it  takes,  as  forming  a  whole,  in 
one  sense  and  from  one  point  of  view; 
and  we  may  regard  the  world  of  space  as 
similarly  forming  a  whole.  Each  of  them 
forms  a  whole  in  the  sense  that  its  parts 
are  not  independent  of  each  other,  and 
are  not  independent  of  the  whole.  No 
part  of  space,  that  is  to  say,  can  be  cut 
out  of  the  whole  and  taken  away  from 
it :  the  parts  exist  only  in  the  whole.  No 
moment  can  be  really  cut  out  of  time  and 
taken  away  from  it:  we  distinguish,  or 
pretend  to  distinguish,  separate  moments, 


138  Philosophy 

but  they  do  not  exist;  they  are  not  to 
be  found  scattered  about  anywhere.  In 
time  the  moments,  that  is  to  say  the 
parts,  exist  only  in  the  whole. 

But,  though  time  may  be  regarded  as  a 
whole  in  this  way,  and  though  space  may 
be  regarded  as  a  whole  in  the  same  way,  it 
is  clear  that  time  and  space  are  not  alto- 
gether independent  of  one  another:  to 
move  from  one  point  in  space  to  another 
takes  time  and  implies  time.  We  can 
measure  space  by  the  time  which  it  takes 
to  go  from  one  place  to  another;  and 
we  measure  time  by  means  of  the  clock- 
hands  which  travel  round  the  dial,  or  by 
the  apparent  motion  of  the  sun. 

Now,  if,  as  some  philosophers  suppose, 
matter  in  motion  is  the  one  ultimate 
reality,  then  the  space  in  which  particles 
of  matter  move,  and  the  time  they  take 
to  perform  their  movements,  may  be 
distinguished  from  one  another  by  us,  but 
they  do  not  exist  separately  and  apart 
from  one  another.  Motion,  if  it  is  to 
take  place,  requires  both  space  and  time; 


Personality  and  the  Whole    139 

and  in  motion  you  cannot  have  the  one 
without  the  other.  They  are  not  two 
separate  and  independent  wholes:  each 
implies  the  other. 

Further,  if  matter  in  motion — that  is, 
matter  moving  in  space  and  requiring 
time  to  do  so — is,  as  is  supposed  by  one 
school  of  philosophers,  the  ultimate 
reality,  then  one  movement  of  matter, 
or  one  set  of  movements,  produces  an- 
other. One  movement  is  the  outcome  of 
another,  and  is  its  inevitable  outcome: 
from  beginning  to  end,  the  whole  course 
of  matter  in  motion  is  inevitable,  for  each 
movement  is  determined,  or  rather  pre- 
determined, by  the  previous  movement. 
The  whole  course,  indeed,  was  pre- 
determined from  the  start,  or  rather  by 
the  start:  once  set  going,  it  had  to  go 
the  way  it  was  started.  At  the  present 
time,  not  only  is  the  past  unalterable, 
but  the  future  is  fixed  and  pre-deter- 
mined.  And,  if  matter  in  motion  is  the 
one  ultimate  reality,  then  we  are  matter 
in  motion,  and  our  movements  are  all 


140  Philosophy 

pre-determined,  and  our  future  is  fixed, 
as  fixed  and  unalterable  as  our  past. 

All  this  follows  logically,  consistently, 
inevitably,  from  the  assumption  which 
some  philosophers  make,  when  they  ask 
you  to  suppose  that  matter  in  motion 
alone  exists.  They  have  every  right  to 
make  that  supposition,  if  they  think  that 
by  making  it  they  can  explain  experience. 
If,  however,  their  supposition  fails  to 
explain  experience,  then  their  supposition, 
that  matter  in  motion  alone  exists,  breaks 
down;  and,  if  we  want  to  explain  and 
understand  experience,  we  must  try  some 
other  supposition. 

Then,  is  there  anything  else  in  our 
experience  besides  matter  in  motion? 
and,  if  there  is,  is  it  something  which 
is  pre-determined?  or  is  it  something 
which  is  not  matter  in  motion  and  which 
is  not  pre-determined? 

There  is  something  else,  as  we  have 
already  seen.  There  is  not  only  the 
matter  in  motion  which  is  studied  in  its 
many  various  forms  by  the  man  of 


Personality  and  the  Whole    141 

science:  there  is  also  the  student  who 
studies  it  and  manipulates  it  and  experi- 
ments with  it.  There  is  his  knowledge  of 
it,  as  he  studies  it;  and  there  is  his  action, 
as  he  experiments  on  it. 

It  is  to  his  action  we  now  turn.  Or, 
rather,  it  is  to  the  action  of  any  one  of  us, 
for  we  are  all  students  of  life,  and  making 
our  experiments  upon  it — even  if  they  are 
boggling  ones. 

We  are  always  doing  something,  or 
rather  we  are  always  in  process  of  doing 
something.  Consequently,  we  are  always 
looking  forwards — to  what  will  hap- 
pen, if  we  do  what  we  are  thinking 
of,  or  to  what  will  be  the  consequences, 
if  we  don't.  Our  eyes  are  fixed  on 
the  future,  we  say.  But  strictly  speak- 
ing, our  eyes  travel  to  and  fro  from 
the  consequences  of  doing  the  thing,  to 
the  consequences  which  will  follow  if  we 
don't.  The  fact  is,  that  the  alternative 
consequences  are,  both  of  them,  possible 
futures.  And  so  long  as  both  of  them 
are  possible  futures,  there  is  no  future 


142  Philosophy 

which  is  fixed.  And  if  there  is  none  that 
is  fixed  as  yet,  there  is  none  that  we  can 
see.  We  only  see,  and  only  can  see, 
possible  futures. 

But,  eventually,  that  is,  after  consider- 
ing the  consequences  on  the  one  hand  of 
doing  the  thing,  and  on  the  other  of 
abstaining  from  the  thing,  we  act — that  is 
to  say,  we  choose  one  of  the  possibilities, 
and  realise  it.  And  then  it  may  turn  out 
that  we  did  foresee — did  indeed  actually 
foresee — the  future. 

We  are,  as  already  said,  always  in  pro- 
cess of  doing  something.  Life  is  a  process 
of  doing  something,  of  action.  The  pro- 
cess of  life  is  being  continually  realised — 
and  realised  precisely  because  we  choose  a 
possibility  and  make  it  a  reality.  If  we 
had  not  chosen  the  possibility  we  did, 
the  other  possibility  would  have  become 
the  reality.  The  future,  then,  is  con- 
tinually becoming  what  we  (and  others) 
make  it.  It  is  perpetually  being  shaped. 
The  future  is  never  finished:  it  is  never 
finally  and  unalterably  fixed  by  our  action. 


Personality  and  the  Whole    143 

There  always  and  forever  are  alternative 
possibilities — the  possibilities  of  acting 
or  not  acting — between  which  we  choose. 
It  is  by  our  choice  we  make,  or  help  to 
make,  the  future;  the  future  is  not  pre- 
determined, independently  of  us. 

Thus,  we  arrive  at  a  conclusion  quite 
different  from  that  reached  by  the  Materi- 
alist. And  the  difference  follows  very 
naturally  from  the  fact  that  we  started 
from  different  premisses  from  his.  He 
started  from  the  assumption  that  nothing 
exists  really  but  matter  in  motion — 
matter  moving  in  space,  and  requiring 
time  to  do  so.  We  started  from  the 
assumption  that  matter  in  motion  could 
not  be  known,  to  begin  with,  unless  there 
were  some  person  to  know  it ;  and  that  we, 
being  persons,  are  always  in  process  of 
doing  something. 

It  is,  however,  not  the  difference  in  our 
premisses  that  need  be  insisted  on  here. 
The  question  is  rather  as  to  the  difference 
in  our  conclusions.  The  Materialist's 
conclusion  is  that  the  future  is  already 


144  Philosophy 

made,  because  matter  in  motion — which, 
according  to  him,  alone  exists — has  all  its 
movements  pre-determined.  Our  con- 
clusion is  that  it  is  the  active,  conscious 
person  who  is  always  making  the  future, 
and  that  he  is  always  making  it  because 
he  is  always  in  process  of  doing  something. 
We  have  no  use  in  our  system  for  ready- 
made  futures.  We  allow  a  choice  be- 
tween alternatives,  none  of  which  is 
already  made-up;  and  all  of  which  are 
possible  until  one  of  them  becomes  actual. 
It  is,  then,  because  the  Materialist 
starts  from  the  assumption  of  matter  in 
motion  as  the  one  reality,  that  he  comes 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  future  is  pre- 
determined and  ready-made.  Whereas, 
if  we  start  from  the  assumption  that 
nothing — not  even  matter  in  motion 
— can  be  known  to  exist  unless  there  is 
some  one  to  know  it,  and  that  no  action 
can  be  performed  unless  there  is  some  one 
who  does  it,  we  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  future  is  not  pre-determined  and 
ready-made,  but  is  continually  being  made 


Personality  and  the  Whole    145 

by  beings  who  choose  between  alternative 
possibilities. 

Let  us,  then,  trace  the  consequences  of 
this  assumption  of  ours,  for  the  interesting 
question  is  whether  it  is  an  assumption 
which  is  capable  of  explaining  experience 
as  a  whole.  An  assumption  which  fails  to 
do  so  fails  to  do  what  it  undertakes  to  do, 
and  is  philosophically  untenable. 

Suppose,  then,  that  the  future  is  not 
fixed  and  pre-determined,  but  is  incessant- 
ly created  by  the  free  choice  of  conscious, 
active  beings  choosing  between  alterna- 
tive possibilities.  Then,  the  notion  of 
pre-determination  is  an  erroneous  notion. 
But  it  is  one  which  logically  and  neces- 
sarily follows  from  supposing  that  matter 
in  motion  is  the  sole  reality,  that  matter  in 
motion  alone  exists.  Therefore,  the  sup- 
position that  matter  in  motion  alone 
exists  must  be  erroneous.  Matter  is,  in 
fact,  an  abstraction,  reached  by  concen- 
trating our  attention  on  one  part  of  our 
experience.  And  being  an  abstraction 
it  is  not  a  reality. 

10 


146  Philosophy 

Matter,  then,  regarded  as  the  sole 
reality,  is  an  abstraction  and  a  falsity. 
The  behaviour  of  matter,  so  regarded, 
however,  is  consistently  and  necessarily 
regarded  as  pre-determined.  But,  if 
matter,  so  regarded,  is  a  false  concep- 
tion, its  pre-determination,  or  the  pre- 
determination of  its  movements,  is  part 
of  the  falsity  of  the  conception.  Matter, 
then,  as  an  independent  reality,  existing 
by  itself,  we  will  put  aside,  as  being,  with 
its  pre-determined  movements,  an  ab- 
straction and  a  falsity. 

After  matter  let  us  take  space,  for  the 
notion  of  matter  is  closely  bound  up  with 
the  notion  of  space.  Matter  is  in  space, 
and  space  is  that  in  which  matter  is  and 
moves.  Our  position,  that  is  to  say  our 
assumption  or  supposition,  is  that  experi- 
ence is  a  whole,  and  that  its  parts,  though 
they  may  be  distinguished,  have  no 
existence  independent  of  the  whole,  or 
apart  from  it.  And  we  have  seen  that 
space  has  no  independent  parts:  you  can- 
not cut  a  piece  out  of  space  and  take 


Personality  and  the  Whole    147 

it  away  somewhere  else,  and  you  can- 
not separate  one  piece  of  space  from 
another.  Regarded  in  this  way,  as  hav- 
ing no  parts  that  are  independent  of  one 
another,  space  bears  a  resemblance  to 
a  whole.  And  yet  neither  those  who 
believe  the  space,  in  which  matter  is, 
to  be  a  reality,  nor  we,  regard  it  as  being 
a  whole. 

Those  who  believe  space  to  have  a 
reality  of  its  own  believe  also  that  space 
is  infinite.  And  if  we  conceive  it  to  be 
infinite,  we  cannot  conceive  it  as  a  whole 
— there  is  always  some  of  it  left  over. 
That  is  due  to  the  simple  fact  that  the 
notion  of  infinite  space  is  evidently 
a  self -contradictory  notion.  It  is  the 
notion  of  a  whole  that  is  never  a  whole. 
It  is  a  nightmare — the  nightmare  of  try- 
ing to  pack  up  your  box,  and  finding 
that  the  more  things  you  pack  in,  the 
more  there  are  that  you  can't  get  in. 
You  can't  get  any  whole  which  will 
include  infinite  space. 

Thus,  though  space,  as  having  no  parts 


148  Philosophy 

that  are  independent  of  one  another, 
bears  a  resemblance  to  a  whole,  not  even 
those  who  believe  in  the  reality  of  the 
space  in  which  matter  is,  can  believe,  or 
do  believe,  it  to  be  a  whole.  Much  less 
can  we,  who  believe  experience  to  be  a 
whole  and  the  only  whole — much  less 
can  we  believe  that  space  is  that  whole. 
If  it  were  the  whole,  there  would  be 
nothing  else  but  space  and  the  matter  it 
contains.  But  what  we  are  supposing 
is  that  in  experience  we  find  much  more 
than  space  and  matter:  we  find,  for 
instance,  as  a  matter  of  experience,  that 
we  have  knowledge  and  perform  actions. 
Space,  then,  is  but  part  of  the  experience 
we  have,  an  element  in  the  whole:  it  is 
not  the  whole  of  experience,  nor  is  space 
itself  a  whole.  Whatever  view  we  take 
of  the  ultimate  nature  of  reality,  there 
can  in  the  last  resort  only  be  one  whole :  if 
we  suppose  there  are  two,  we  make  a 
self-contradictory  supposition,  for  if  we 
suppose  that  there  are  two,  we  thereby 
suppose  that  neither  is  the  whole. 


Personality  and  the  Whole    149 

The  simple  fact  is  that  space,  by  itself, 
like  matter  by  itself,  is  an  abstraction,  and 
not  a  reality.  And  every  abstraction 
proves  self -contradictory  if  it  is  supposed 
to  be  not  an  abstraction  but  a  reality. 

Space,  then,  on  our  supposition  that 
experience  is  a  whole,  and  the  whole — 
space  we  will  put  aside,  as  being,  together 
with  the  matter  it  contains,  an  abstrac- 
tion from  experience,  and  so  a  falsity. 

The  infinity  of  space  is  a  self-contra- 
dictory notion,  due  simply  to  the  mistake 
of  forgetting  that  space  is  an  abstraction, 
and  mistaking  it  for  an  independent 
reality. 

But,  matter,  moving  in  space,  requires 
time  for  its  movements.  The  question, 
then,  is  at  once  suggested  whether  time 
also  is  an  abstraction,  just  as  we  have 
seen  that  matter  and  space  are  abstrac- 
tions, and  even  that  matter  moving  in 
space  is  an  abstraction  from  experience, 
and  not  the  whole  of  our  experience. 

That  is  a  most  interesting  question. 
And  for  this  reason:  so  long  as  we  were 


150  Philosophy 

only  talking  about  particles  of  matter, 
moving  in  space,  we  were  talking  about 
abstractions,  which  did  not  include  our 
conscious  selves,  and  so  did  not  seem 
to  affect  us.  But,  when  we  come  to 
time,  we  can  no  longer  pretend  that  it 
does  not  affect  us.  Even  if  we  were  to 
dismiss  matter  and  space  as  mere  fig- 
ments of  the  philosophic  imagination, 
and  to  say  that  the  one  and  only  reality 
is  the  experience  of  conscious,  active 
selves,  still  we  should  be  confronted 
with  the  fact  that  it  is  in  time  that 
thoughts  succeed  each  other  and  that 
actions  take  place. 

We  ask,  then,  with  some  interest, 
whether  time,  like  matter  and  space,  is  an 
abstraction. 

First,  we  cannot  help  noticing  that 
time  bears  some  resemblances  to  space; 
and,  like  space,  bears  some  affinity  to  a 
whole.  Thus,  the  parts  of  a  whole, 
though  they  may  be  distinguished  from  it 
and  from  one  another,  have  no  existence 
independent  of  the  whole  and  apart  from 


Personality  and  the  Whole    151 

it.  And  it  is  clear  that  time,  like  space, 
has  no  independent  parts,  for  you  can- 
not cut  a  period  out  of  time,  and  move  it 
backwards  or  forwards  to  some  other 
point  in  time;  you  cannot  disintegrate 
time  into  moments,  and  separate  a  pres- 
ent moment  from  the  preceding  or  the 
following  moment,  for  the  present  glides 
into  the  past,  and  the  future  into  the 
present,  without  any  break  or  interval 
between  the  two.  Regarded  in  this  way, 
then,  as  having  no  moments  or  parts 
that  are  separate  and  independent  of  one 
another,  time  bears  a  resemblance  to  a 
whole,  as  we  saw  that  space  does. 

Time  resembles  space,  again,  in  yet 
another  respect.  Those  who  conceive 
either  time  or  space  to  have  a  reality  of 
its  own,  believe  that  time  like  space  is 
infinite.  Stretch  out  time  as  far  as  you 
like,  backwards  and  forwards,  and  yet, 
when  you  have  stretched  it  out  as  far 
as  you  can,  what  there  is,  before  it  and 
after  it,  is  more  time.  If  it  is  infinite, 
it  is  infinite,  and  has  no  end  either  way. 


152  Philosophy 

We  cannot  conceive  it  contained  in  any 
whole  whatever. 

Once  more,  as  in  the  case  of  space,  the 
reason  for  this  is  that  the  notion  of 
infinite  time  is  a  self-contradictory  no- 
tion; and  to  ask  us  to  imagine  it  is  the 
same  thing  as  asking  us  to  conceive  a 
whole  that  is  not  a  whole.  When  we  try 
to  do  so,  we  are  moving,  once  more,  in 
the  region  of  nightmares:  the  more  we 
try  to  pack  up  infinite  time,  the  more 
there  is  that  won't  go  in. 

We,  then,  who  suppose  that  there  is 
only  one  whole — the  whole  of  experience 
— cannot  suppose  that  time  is  a  whole, 
any  more  than  we  could  suppose  that 
space  was  a  whole,  for  there  can,  in  the 
last  resort,  only  be  one  whole.  Time 
may  be  an  element  in  the  whole,  as  we 
suggested  that  space  might  be.  But 
the  simple  fact  is  that  time  by  itself,  like 
space  by  itself,  is  an  abstraction,  and  not  a 
reality.  And  every  abstraction  proves 
self-contradictory,  when  it  is  supposed 
to  be  not  an  abstraction  but  a  reality. 


Personality  and  the  Whole    153 

But  though  time,  regarded  apart  from 
the  experience  of  conscious,  active  selves, 
is  not  a  reality  but  an  abstraction,  still, 
we  may  say,  for  all  that,  it  is  a  reality  in 
their  experience,  and  as  they  experience 
it.  It  is,  we  may  say,  just  like  any  other 
abstraction,  for  instance  weight.  Weight 
as  an  abstraction,  as  something  all  by 
itself,  is  something  which  has  no  exist- 
ence; yet,  as  it  is  found  in  our  experi- 
ence, it  is  real  enough.  We  cannot  say 
that  no  things  are  heavy.  In  the  same 
way,  moments  of  time  are  an  abstraction. 
If  moments  are  conceived  as  abstractions, 
if,  that  is  to  say,  each  is  regarded  as 
something  standing  by  itself,  and  is 
supposed  to  be  separated,  somehow,  both 
from  the  moment  which  precedes  it  and 
from  the  moment  which  follows  it;  if 
moments  are  conceived  to  be,  as  it  were, 
so  many  separate  dots,  and  time  is 
understood  to  be  the  whole  row  of  dots, 
then  both  the  dots  and  the  row  are 
simply  things  which  have  no  existence  in 
our  experience.  Moments  are  not  experi- 


154  Philosophy 

enced  by  us  as  independent  realities;  and 
the  conception  of  time  as  made  up  by 
adding  these  non-existent  moments  to- 
gether is  a  false  conception.  A  moment 
by  itself,  independent  of  what  precedes 
and  what  follows  it,  is  non-existent,  is 
nought;  and  as  by  adding  nought  to 
nought  you  can  only  get  nought,  so 
by  adding  one  non-existent  moment  to 
another  you  can  only  get  what  is  non- 
existent— you  can  only  get  a  non-existent 
time. 

Thus  time,  space,  and  matter  are  not 
experienced  by  us  as  independent  reali- 
ties; and,  if  conceived  as  independent 
realities,  they  lead  to  false  conclusions: 
matter  leads  to  the  false  conclusion  that 
everything  is  pre-determined ;  space  leads 
to  the  denial  of  the  reality  of  any  whole ; 
time  leads  to  the  notion  of  events  as 
abstractions,  unrelated  dots,  which  are 
supposed  to  be  independent  of  the  whole 
and  yet  to  be  parts  of  it. 

Let  us  now  turn  from  moments  of  time, 
which  are  not  real,  and  of  which  we  have 


Personality  and  the  Whole    155 

no  experience,  to  our  actions,  which  are 
real  and  of  which  we  have  experience. 
When  we  act,  we  act  with  a  purpose,  for 
the  sake  of  some  object,  with  an  end  in 
view.  Our  actions  are  never  independent 
of  the  end  they  are  directed  to,  future 
though  it  be.  Our  actions  are  never 
separate,  independent  dots;  they  are  a 
continuous  process,  which  is  always  going 
on :  we  are  always  engaged  on  something ; 
life's  work  is  never  done.  An  action 
has  no  meaning,  except  as  being  directed 
towards  an  end,  which  is  conceived  and 
intended.  And  the  end  to  which  actions 
are  directed  is  implied  in  them — that  is  to 
say,  they  would  not  be  performed  at  all 
but  for  the  fact  that  they  are  aimed  at 
some  end  and  directed  by  some  purpose. 
Our  actions,  therefore,  are  a  process  by 
which,  or  in  which,  an  end  is  being 
attained. 

If,  now,  we  regard  the  actions  which 
are  being  performed  by  us,  and  the  actions 
which  we  see  going  on  everywhere  around 
us,  as  making  up  the  whole  of  reality, 


156  Philosophy 

that  is,  of  our  experience,  we  shall  have 
to  say  that  everywhere  there  is  activity, 
action;  that  the  whole  of  reality  is  in 
activity — that  is  to  say,  is  in  process; 
and  that  reality  is  the  whole  which  is 
in  process. 

The  moment,  however,  we  say  this — 
that  reality  is  the  whole  which  is  in  pro- 
cess— we  shall  find  ourselves  in  difficul- 
ties ;  and  being  in  difficulties  we  shall  have 
alternative  courses  open  to  us.  We  may, 
that  is  to  say,  be  frightened  by  the  diffi- 
culties, and  decide  to  retrace  our  steps, 
to  give  up  the  supposition  that  has  led  us 
into  all  this  difficulty — or  not.  The 
supposition  was  that  experience  is  a 
whole,  and  that  none  of  its  parts  can  exist 
independently  of  the  whole  and  separate 
from  it ;  and,  accordingly,  that  the  notions 
of  time,  space,  and  matter  as  having 
existence  independent  of  the  whole  must 
be  abstractions  and  therefore  falsities. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  we  are  not  in- 
clined to  be  frightened  because  difficulties 
threaten  to  loom  up,  we  shall  stick  to  our 


Personality  and  the  Whole    157 

original  assumption — which  was  to  sup- 
pose that  experience  is  a  whole — and  we 
shall  go  forward  to  meet  the  difficulties. 

The  difficulty  that  now  confronts  our 
supposition,  that  experience  is  a  whole, 
is  that  we  ourselves  have  said  that 
experience  or  reality  is  a  whole  which  is  in 
process.  And,  in  saying  so,  we  seem  to 
have  landed  ourselves  in  a  self-contra- 
diction of  exactly  the  same  kind  as  we 
said  that  the  notions  of  time,  space,  and 
matter  led  to;  for,  surely,  to  speak  of  a 
whole  as  being  in  process  is  to  contradict 
ourselves.  If  we  assume  that  experience 
or  reality  is  a  whole,  we  cannot  go  further 
than  that.  Beyond  the  whole  there  can- 
not be  anything.  If,  on  the  other  hand, 
we  assume  that  experience  or  reality  is  in 
process,  then,  as  long  as  it  is  in  process, 
it  is  not  the  whole. 

Thus,  we  seem  to  have  landed  ourselves 
in  a  difficulty,  and  to  be  saying  that  a 
whole  is  both  a  whole  and  not  a  whole. 
And  the  only  way  of  escape  would  seem  to 
be  to  give  up  one  or  the  other  of  these 


158  Philosophy 

self -contradictory  assertions.  But  that  is 
the  counsel  of  fear.  So,  instead  of  follow- 
ing it,  let  us  look  at  the  difficulty  and  see 
whether  we  are  really  compelled  to  sup- 
pose that  a  whole  cannot  be  both  a  whole 
and  not  a  whole. 

If  there  were  anything  exceptional  or 
unusual  about  saying  that  a  thing — call  it 
A — both  is  A  and  is  not  A,  then  perhaps 
we  might  feel  rather  apprehensive.  But 
there  is  nothing  unusual  or  exceptional 
about  statements  of  this  kind;  you  are 
constantly  making,  or  implying,  them 
about  everything.  If  you  say,  of  the 
thing  A,  simply  that  it  is  A — that  a  man 
is  a  man — you  may  be  saying  something 
that  it  is  very  necessary  to  remind  your 
hearers  of;  but  you  are  not  adding  to 
knowledge.  If  you  wish  to  make  a 
statement  that  conveys  any  further  infor- 
mation about  A,  beyond  the  fact  that  it  is 
A,  you  must  say  that  A  is  B ;  and  B  must 
not  be  simply  A  over  again.  B  must  be 
something  different  from  A.  It  must, 
that  is  to  say,  be  not  A.  Then  you 


Personality  and  the  Whole    159 

have  indeed  given  us  information  and  told 
us  something  new.  You  have  told  us  not 
only  that  A  is  A,  but  also  that  it  is  B.  In 
short,  you  have  said,  what  you  are  con- 
stantly saying  in  effect — that  A  both  is  A 
and  is  not  A,  that  is  to  say  is  B. 

If,  now,  A  stands  for  "the  whole," 
and  B  stands  for  "in  process,"  there  is 
obviously  nothing  exceptional  or  unusual 
in  saying  that  the  whole,  both  is  the 
whole — that  A  is  A — and  that  the  whole 
is  in  process — that  A  is  B. 

If  it  is  felt  that  it  must  be  merely  a 
verbal  quibble  to  say  that  A  both  is  A 
and  is  not  A,  that  is  to  say  is  B,  the  only 
way  to  dispel  the  feeling  will  be  to  turn 
away  from  symbols  and  words  to  facts. 
Let  us,  then,  turn  to  what  even  the 
Materialist  will  admit  to  be  facts;  and 
we  shall  discover  that  there,  too,  we  find 
this  to  be  no  verbal  quibble,  but  a  simple 
statement  of  the  facts.  According  to  the 
Materialist,  the  material  world,  or  the 
material  universe,  being  matter  in  motion, 
is  in  constant  change,  and  its  condition  at 


160  Philosophy 

any  given  moment  is  the  outcome  of  its 
condition  at  the  previous  moment.  And 
its  condition  at  the  one  moment  is  differ- 
ent from  its  condition  at  the  next.  But, 
we  must  point  out,  it  is  the  same  universe 
all  the  time.  So  the  same  universe,  A, 
both  is  A  and  is  not  A. 

If  we  are  to  deny  that,  we  shall  have  to 
say  that  there  are  as  many  different  uni- 
verses as  there  are  successive  moments. 
And  that  is  plainly  absurd;  there  cannot 
be  more  than  one  universe,  because  "uni- 
verse" includes  everything — if  it  does  not 
include  everything  whatever,  it  would  not 
be  the  universe. 

Perhaps  this  may  be  made  clearer  if  we 
take  an  illustration  from  chemistry.  At 
the  beginning  of  a  chemical  experiment 
the  chemical  constituents  are  enumer- 
ated; and,  at  the  end  of  it,  precisely  the 
same  chemical  constituents  are  found  to 
be  there.  You  start  with  two  molecules 
of  hydrogen  and  one  of  oxygen;  you  pass 
an  electric  spark  through  them,  and  you 
still  have  H2O,  though  now  you  have 


Personality  and  the  Whole    161 

them  in  the  form  of  a  drop  of  water. 
You  have  the  same  three  molecules  all  the 
time;  the  only  difference  is  that  at  one 
moment  they  are  water,  that  is  A ;  and  at 
another  they  are  not  A — not  a  liquid 
but  a  gas. 

As  a  simple  fact,  then,  every  whole,  or 
anything  that  we  choose  to  regard  for  the 
moment  as  a  whole,  is  in  process. 

The  solution  of  any  difficulty  that  may 
yet  be  felt  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  differ- 
ence between  saying  that  A  is  A,  and  that 
A  is  B,  is  not  a  difference  in  A  but  in  the 
point  of  view  from  which  you  look  at  it, 
or  apprehend  it.  If  we  look  at  A  from 
the  point  of  view  of  B,  if,  that  is  to  say, 
we  look  at  the  whole  as  being  in  process, 
we  say  accordingly  that  the  whole  is  in 
process.  And  that  is,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  only  way  in  which  we  human 
beings  can  actually  apprehend  the  whole. 
But  we  can  also  suppose  that  there  is  a 
point  of  view  from  which  the  whole  is 
seen  as  a  whole,  as  a  reality,  as  a  being, 
not  a  becoming.  Now,  each  of  us  human 


1 62  Philosophy 

beings  can  only  say  "I  am  becoming." 
There  is  only  one  being  who  can  say  I 
AM.  In  that,  the  full  and  perfect  sense 
of  the  word,  there  is  only  one  perfect 
personality;  and  that  is  God. 

But  this  conclusion  is  really  the  sup- 
position which  was  implied  in  the  assump- 
tion which  we  made  at  the  very  beginning, 
when  we  inquired  what  our  experience 
all  came  to,  and  what  it  all  meant.  In 
asking  that  question,  we  assumed  that 
experience  was  a  whole  and  had  a  mean- 
ing. And  now  it  turns  out  that  that 
assumption  requires  a  previous  supposi- 
tion, the  supposition  of  the  existence  of  a 
perfect  Personality,  and  the  belief  that 
"in  Him  we  live  and  move  and  have  our 
being. " 

On  the  assumption,  which  we  now  see 
that  we  have  made  from  the  beginning, 
that  experience  is  a  whole  and  has  a 
meaning,  and  that  the  reality  of  the  whole 
is  a  perfect  Personality,  it  will  follow 
that  our  human  personalities  are  but 
feeble  copies  of  it,  if  for  no  other  rea- 


Personality  and  the  Whole    163 

son  than  for  the  reason  that  none  of 
us  can  say  that  we  are  not  in  process, 
not  becoming,  that  as  yet  we  are.  We 
are  copies,  made  in  the  image  of  God. 
As  copies,  we  have  free-will,  given  to  us 
by  Him  who  made  us.  Because  we 
have  free-will,  the  future  is  not  pre- 
determined but  will  be  what  we  help 
to  make  it.  Because  we  have  free-will 
we  are  helping  to  determine — for  better 
or  for  worse — what  the  future  will  be. 
The  whole,  that  is  to  say,  is  in  process, 
and  we  can  help  to  advance  it  or  retard 
it.  Process,  or  activity  in  process,  implies 
an  end — a  good  which  is  being  realised 
and  an  end  which  is  yet  to  be  attained. 
That  good  is  expressed  in  the  words: 
"Thou  shalt  love  thy  God  with  all  thy 
heart  and  with  all  thy  soul,  and  thy 
neighbour  as  thyself."  And  that  love  is 
in  our  power  to  give  or  to  withhold;  we 
are  free  to  do  so  or  not  to  do  so. 

To  sum  up  then.  If  we  assume  that 
there  is  an  answer  to  the  question  which 
we  put,  when  we  inquire  what  our  experi- 


164  Philosophy 

ence  all  comes  to,  we  assume  that  experi- 
ence is  a  whole;  and  thereby  we  assume 
that  its  parts  are  not  self -existent  and  not 
independent  either  of  each  other  or  of  the 
whole. 

In  the  case  of  things  occupying  space, 
such  as  the  chariot,  we  saw  that  none 
were  self -existent  or  independent  of  each 
other.  We  saw  it  also  to  be  equally  true 
of  processes  which  occupy  time,  and  of 
the  moments  into  which  we  suppose  time 
to  be  divided.  And  in  the  case  of  actions, 
which  we  will  and  perform,  we  found  that 
none  are  separate  and  independent;  but 
that,  in  all  our  actions,  we  are  doing 
something  with  a  purpose — that  is,  for 
the  sake  of  something  else. 

Next,  we  saw  that,  although  we  dis- 
tinguish between  space  and  time,  yet  the 
idea  of  matter  in  motion  implies  both  time 
and  space :  we  can  suppose  no  movements 
of  matter,  unless  we  suppose  that  they 
take  place  in  space  and  occupy  time. 
Neither  space  nor  time  is  self -existent,  for 
movement  requires  both. 


Personality  and  the  Whole    165 

But  matter  in  motion,  or  the  movement 
of  matter,  if  taken  by  itself,  requires  us 
to  believe  that  one  movement  is  deter- 
mined by  a  previous  movement,  that  is  to 
say,  is  pre-determined.  And,  if  matter 
in  motion  alone  existed  and  were  self- 
existent,  there  would  be  no  more  to  be 
said.  But  we  exist  and  we  act ;  and,  when 
we  act,  we  choose  between  alternative 
courses,  both  of  which  are  possible; 
and,  as  both  are  equally  possible,  neither 
is  pre-determined.  We  do  not  deal  in 
ready-made  futures. 

The  next  point  is  that  if  the  future  is 
not  ready-made  and  pre-determined,  the 
idea  which  leads  to  the  belief  that  it  is  pre- 
determined must  be  a  false  idea.  And 
"the  false  idea  is  the  notion  that  matter, 
with  its  pre-determined  movements,  is  an 
independent  and  self-existent  reality.  In 
truth,  on  our  assumption,  matter  in 
motion  is  an  abstraction  from  reality; 
and  the  idea  that  it  is  not  an  abstraction 
from  reality,  but  is  the  whole  of  reality,  is 
a  false  idea. 


1 66  Philosophy 

Its  falsity  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  it 
requires  us  to  believe  that  space  is  infinite ; 
and,  if  space  is  infinite,  it  cannot  be  a 
whole.  But  infinite  space  is  an  abstrac- 
tion from  reality,  and  is  neither  a  whole 
nor  the  whole.  Similarly  time,  and  espe- 
cially time  regarded  as  infinite,  is  an  ab- 
straction from  the  whole  of  experience, 
and  is  obviously  not  the  whole  of  reality. 

Thus  time,  space,  and  matter  are  not 
experienced  by  us  as  independent  reali- 
ties. As  experienced,  they  are  elements 
in  our  experience  as  a  whole.  It  is  only 
when  they  are  abstracted  from  experi- 
ence that  they  are  considered  to  be  inde- 
pendent realities;  and  then,  because  they 
are  abstractions,  they  are  not  realities. 

Turning,  then,  from  these  abstractions 
— time,  space,  and  matter — we  find  that 
our  experience  is  the  experience  of  ac- 
tivity; and  that  activity  is  a  process. 
But  it  is  part  of  our  original  assumption 
that  experience  is  a  whole.  To  us,  human 
beings,  and  from  our  human  point  of  view, 
reality  must  present  itself  as  a  process. 


Personality  and  the  Whole    167 

Only  to  God  can  it  present  itself  as  a 
whole. 

The  conviction,  therefore,  with  which 
we  started,  that  experience,  as  a  whole, 
must  have  some  meaning  and  some  pur- 
pose, is  the  conviction,  it  turns  out,  that 
there  is  a  perfect  Personality,  and  that 
"in  Him  we  live  and  move  and  have  our 
being."  And  our  actions  are  not  pre- 
determined. We  can,  if  we  will,  do  His 
will,  and  draw  near  to  Him  both  in  our 
hearts  and  in  our  actions.  But,  to  draw 
near  to  Him,  we  must  love  Him,  with  all 
our  heart  and  with  all  our  soul,  and  must 
love  our  neighbour  as  ourself .  So  far  as 
we  do  that,  we  are  acting  up  to  our 
philosophy,  are  putting  our  philosophy  in 
practice,  and  are  practical  philosophers. 


INDEX 


Abstractions,  16-20,  21,  22, 
26,  28,  68,  70,  71,  101, 
102,  114,  115,  145,  146, 
149,  153,  165 

Action,  100,  108,  112,  126, 

135.  136,  137,  HO,  141, 

155  ff.,  163,  164 
Analysis,  28 
Appearance     and     reality, 

123  ff. 

Apple,  52,  53 

Assumption,  see  Hypothesis 
Atoms,  124 
Attention,  23,  24 


B 


Bell,  51,  52 


Causation,  universal,  37  ff. 

Causes,  37  ff. 

Chariot,    the,    130  ff.,  135, 

164 

Circle,  expanding,  12,  13,  31 
Clapper,  51,  52 
Common  sense,  97 
Conceptions,  25 
Consciousness,  49,  93 
Consequences,  141,  142 


Constructive  philosophy,  35 

Curve,  the,  24,  25,  26,  28, 

32-36,    48-50,    61-65, 

83,  85,  90,  91,  92,  96, 

109,  no,  in 

D 

Destructive  philosophy,  35 
Digging-stick,  113 
Dogmatism,  6,  8,  9,  n,  12, 

30,31 
Dots,  153 
Doubt,  3 

E 

Earth,  40 

Effects,  39  ff. 

Egg,  the,  28 

Electrons,  124 

End,  the,  104  ff. 

Ends,  29,  30,  163 

Epistemology,  102 

Evolution,  39,  64 

Existence,  49,  109,  in 

Existence  and  knowledge, 
32 

Expectation,  87,  88 

Experience,  2,  3,  7,  8,  9,  30, 
31,  60,  62,  63,  64,  67, 
82,  83,90,91,  106-113, 
114,  115,  129,  157 

Experiment,  21,  31 


169 


170 


Index 


Explanation,  43 
External  world,  63 


Feelings,  49,  53 
Finality,  8,  13 
Freedom,  41 
Free-will,  163 
Future,  the,  10,  141,  142 


God,  112, 115, 119, 122, 126, 
128,  129,  162,  163,  167 

Good,  2,  9,  14,  15,  41,  42, 
43,  44,  99,  100,  104  ff., 
115, 126 

H 

Habit,  88 

"Here,"  118 

Hume,  79  ff.,  84,  85,  86,  87, 

88,91 

Hydrogen,  160 
Hypothesis,  13,  31,  66 
Hypothesis,    of   matter   in 

motion,  42,  44 


Idealism,  34-66 
Ideas,  6 1 
Ignorance,  114 
Infinity,  149,  151,  152 

K 

Knower  and  known,  29 
Knowledge,  108,  in,  141 
Knowledge   and   existence, 
32,33 


Laws,  37  ff.,  64 
Life,  2,  3,  102  ff. 
Love,  129 

M 

Materialism,    34-66,     126, 

143 

Material  things,  109,  116 
Matter,  26,  27,  33,  35,  42- 
44,  51,54  ff.,  65,  78,  79, 
93,  J45,  146;  in  motion, 
68,  138,  139,  165 
Meaning,  I,  2,  3,  4,  30,  47, 

loo,  101,  106 
Mind,  26,  33,  35,  93 
Mind  and  matter,  26 
Molecules,  36,  37,  124,  160 
Moments,    137,    138,    151, 

153,  154,  164 
Moon,  40 
Motion,  27,  37 

N 

Nature,  uniformity  of,  38  ff . 
Nightmare,  147,  152 
"Now,"  120 

O 

Object  and  subject,  25,  29, 
30,  36,  37,  49,  50,  85, 
92,93 

Ontology,  1 02 

Orange,  51,  52,  55,  72,  73, 

95 

Organism,  12,  13 
Oxygen,  160 


Index 


171 


Parts,  130,  8.,  151,  154 

Past,  the,  10 

Person,  62 

Personality,  lagff.,  162,  167 

Philosophy,  I,  64,  67,  81, 
107,  113,  114;  in  prac- 
tice, 98  ff . ;  and  science, 

31 

Plough,  113 

Possibilities,       alternative, 

"45 

Possibility,  142 
Pre-determination,    41    ff. 
139,  140,  144,  146,  165 
Process,  134,  142,  156,  166 
Psychology,  68 
Purpose,  109,  155,  167 

Q 

Qualities,  17,  18,  19,  20 
R 

Ready-made   futures,    144, 

165 

Real  things,  and  real  per- 
sons, 73  S. 

Reality,  35,  42,  44,  46,  74, 
157,  166 

Reflection,  5 


Scepticism,  6,  7,  n,  30,  31, 

67  ff.,  98,  99 
Science,  4,  15,  16,17,  68,  91, 

92,   124;  abstract,   18, 

19.  21,  31 

Sciences,  the  separate,  17 
Self,  79,  80,  84,  95 


Sensationalism,  68,  69,  70, 

71,  126 

Sensationalists,  59  ff. 
Sensations,  45,  51  ff.,  69  ff., 

75-80,94,95,  109,  no; 

loose  and  separate,  82, 

83,  86,  87,  90 
Senses,  the,  36 
Sight,  53 
Solipsism,  75 
Space,  117  ff.,  132,  134  ff., 

146  ff.,  166 
Species,  39 
Stick,  the,  29,  30,  33 
Student,  the,  20,  21,  141 
Subject,  the,  23,  24,  25,  26, 

29,  49,  61,  83-85,  92, 

96;  and  object,  25 
Suppositions,  60,  61,  62,  81, 

82,   98,    114-117,    122, 

129 
Synthesis,  28 


Taste,  51,  52 

"Then,"  120 

"There,"  118 

Things,  45,  46,  47,  53,  96; 

in  the  abstract,  22,  23; 

material,  36,  63 
Thoughts,  46,  49,  50,  109, 

no 
Time,  10, 120  ff.,  133, 150  ff., 

1 66 

Toothache,  82, 83 
Truth,  103 


Uniformity  of  nature,  38  ff ., 
64 


172 


Index 


Universal  causation,  64 
Universe,  159,  160 

W 


Watch,  the,  28 
Watchmaker,  130 


Weight,  17,  19,  20,  23,  28, 

153 
Whole,  the,  3,  5,  11,  13,  16, 

35,    in,    125,  129  ff., 

146,  147,  148,  154,  157, 

158,  166,  167 

Will,  zoo,  113,  126,  135.137 
World,  the,  2 
World-process,  134 


&  Selection  from  the 
Catalogue  of 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 


Complete  Catalogue  sent 
on  application 


By  f. mile  Faguet 

Translated  from  the  French  by 

Sir  Home  Gordon,  Bart. 

12°.    $1.25  net 

This  volume  is  planned  for  the  beginner. 
It  is  designed  to  satisfy  his  initial  curi- 
osity and  in  especial  to  excite  that  curiosity. 
It  is  written  in  a  very  lucid  style,  giving 
a  rapid  sketch  of  the  history  of  philosophy 
from  the  time  of  Thales  down  to  the  last 
century,  avoiding  as  far  as  possible  tech- 
nical language.  The  author  brings  out  in 
a  few  sentences  the  keynote  of  the  teaching 
of  each  school  and  the  main  lines  of  each 
great  man's  thought. 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


Initiation    into    Literature 

r 

By  Emile  Faguet 

of  the  French  Academy 

With  additions  specially  written  for  the  English 
edition 

Translated  from  the  French  by 

Sir  Home  Gordon,  Bart. 

12°.     $1.25  net 

This  volume,  as  indicated  by  the  title,  is  de- 
signed to  show  the  way  to  the  beginner,  to  satisfy 
and  more  especially  to  excite  his  initial  curiosity. 
It  affords  an  adequate  idea  of  the  march  of  facts 
and  of  ideas.  The  reader  is  led,  somewhat 
rapidly,  from  the  remote  origins  to  the  most 
recent  efforts  of  the  human  mind. 

It  should  be  a  convenient  repertory  to  which 
the  mind  may  revert  in  order  to  see  broadly  the 
general  opinion  of  an  epoch — and  what  connected 
it  with  those  that  followed  or  preceded  it.  It 
aims  above  all  things  at  being  a  frame  in  which 
can  be  conveniently  inscribed,  in  the  course  of 
further  studies,  new  conceptions  more  detailed 
and  more  thoroughly  examined. 


Genetic  Interpretation 

The  Outcome  of  Genetic  Logic 

By  James  Mark  Baldwin 
Ph.D.,  D.Sc.,  LL.D. 

Foreign  Correspondent  of  the  Institute  of  France 
Author  of  "  History  of  Psychology,"  etc. 

The  author  here  states  the  general 
results  of  the  extended  studies  in  genetic 
and  social  science  and  anthropology 
made  by  him  and  others,  and  gives  a 
critical  account  of  the  history  of  the 
interpretation  of  nature  and  man,  both 
racial  and  philosophical. 

The  book  offers  an  Introduction  to 
Philosophy  from  a  new  point  of  view. 
It  contains,  also,  a  valuable  glossary  of 
the  terms  employed  in  these  and  similar 
discussions. 


The 
Science  of  Happiness 

By  Jean  Finot 

Author  of  "  Problem  of  the  Sexes,"  etc. 
Translated  from  the  French  by 

Mary  J.  Safford 

8°.     $1.75  net 

The  author  considers  a  subject,  the  solution  of 
which  offers  more  enticement  to  the  well-wisher 
of  the  race  than  the  gold  of  the  Incas  did  to  the 
treasure-seekers  of  Spain,  who  themselves  doubt- 
less looked  upon  the  coveted  yellow  metal, 
however  mistakenly,  as  a  key  to  the  happiness 
which  all  are  trying  to  find.  "  Amid  the  noisy 
tumult  of  life,  amid  the  dissonance  that  divides 
man  from  man,"  remarks  M.  Finot,  "the 
Science  of  Happiness  tries  to  discover  the 
divine  link  which  binds  humanity  to  happi- 
ness through  the  soul  and  through  the  union 
of  souls."  The  author  considers  the  nature 
of  happiness  and  the  means  of  its  attainment, 
as  well  as  many  allied  questions. 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


6D 


THE  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

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